
FARMVILLE, VIRGINIA 



EDUCATIVE SEAT WORK 



Educative Seat Work 

With an Appendix containing a discussion of a schedule for 

a two-room school, and references and addresses 

for helpful books and materials 

BY 
FANNIE W. DUNN 

Supervisor of Rural Schools, State Noimal School 



Copyright 1912 
Bjr- FANNIE "W. DUNN 



Sold at the Book Room. State Female Normal School, Farmville, Va. 
PRICE, 35 CENTS 



PubUshed b;^ ' 

>tat? 3tmnk Normal ^rlynol 

Farmville, Virginia 



\ 



/ 

."^V 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 



To Dr. C. W. Stone, Mr. W. A. Maddox, and Miss M. E. Falls, of 
the State Normal School, Farmville, Virginia, for reading of manuscript 
and many helpful suggestions. 

To Miss Leila Russell, State Normal School, Rock Hill, South 
Carolina, for inspiration and suggestions from her bulletin, "Suggestions 
for Rural Schools." 

To the teachers of Nottoway and Amelia Counties, Virginia, for 
ideas which have proved to be practicable in their schools. 



^C!.A319510 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction 

The Problem Stated 5 

The Aims of This Bulletin 5 

Shorter Hours as a Partial Solution 6 

Possible Help from Rearrangement of the Schedule 7 

Function of Free Play and of Directed Work 7 

Importance of Providing Equipment for Seat Work 9 

Types of Seatwork for the Primary Grades 

Reading, Word Study, Literature, Language : Work with word 
cards, letter cards; outlining with pegs or grains of corn; illus- 
trative drawing and cutting; sand-table work; preparation for 
dramatization or puppet shows ; booklets, dictionaries, copy work, 
short compositions 10 

Number : Work with sticks and cardboard tablets ; making number 
cards ; toy money ; stringing beads, berries, etc. ; measuring and 
cutting sticks for use; ruler making; designing borders; making 
paper strips for weaving; ruling calendars; clock face; construc- 
tion with sticks and peas or pins, involving measurements ; bean- 
bags ; representation of real number interests substituted for more 
formal stick and peg laying 17 

Construction, Color, and Form: Discriminating color; color pic- 
tures from various sources ; wall paper, etc., for doll house ; string- 
ing of varicolored beads ; sewing cards ; further suggestions for 
furnishing doll house ; scrapbooks ; reins ; posters ; valentines ; 
Christmas gifts; May baskets; Easter Eggs and cards; sewing; 
weaving and basketry; paper cutting; paper folding; paper tear- 
ing; woodblock printing; modeling in clay and pulp 23 

Suggestions for Using the Various Types of Seat Work 

Desirability of Relation between the Seat Work and Children's 
Interests 35 

Interests Likely to be Conspicuous in Each Month, with Sugges- 
tions ; October Interests and Suggestions ; Novmeber Interests 
and Suggestions, etc., Through April Interests and Suggestions.. 36 

Grading of Seat Work 38 

Provisions for Free Play 

Out of Door Provisions 40 

Indoor Games and Play Equipment 42 

Possible Objections Considered 43 



CONTENTS— Concluded 

PAGE 

The First Grade's First Week 

Nature and Cause of First Grade Difficulties 44 

Difficulties and Dangers in Providing Formal Work 45 

Suggestions for the First Day 45 

Suggestions for the Second Day 51 

Suggestions for the Third Day 52 

Suggestions for the Fourth Day 54 

Suggestions for the Fifth Day 55 

Need for Early Study of the Pupil's Interests and Abilities 56 

APPENDIX 

Consolidation of Classes and Division of Work in a Two-room 
School 

Essential School Work 57 

Consolidation of Classes as a Means of Making Essential Work 

Possible 58 

Division of Work Among the Two Teachers as a Means of 

Economizing Time 62 

Suggestive Schedules of Recitations for Each Grade 66 

Explanation of the Construction of the Programs 74 

Cost of Materials and References and Addresses 75 



EDUCATIVE SEAT WORK 



INTRODUCTION 



The Problem Stated. 

One of the serious problems of our primary schools today- 
is that of furnishing profitable employment during all the 
hours of the school day. This is especially the case in the 
smaller schools, where one teacher has charge of several 
grades, but is also true in over-crow^ded grades of large town 
or city schools. In the former case, one group of children 
must be provided with unsupervised occupation while the 
teacher's attention is given to the recitation of another grade; 
in the latter, one or more sections of the grade must work 
at their seats while another section is grouped about the 
teacher for more or less individual instruction. In both, the 
same question arises — what may be done to make this seat 
work educative and really profitable, instead of valueless or 
even hurtful, as it sometimes is. Giving the children books to 
study for any considerable length of time means asking an 
impossibility of them, and developing in them habits of list- 
lessness and inattention, which may later be hard to over- 
come. Assigning many written tasks results in cramped fingers, 
bent backs, eyes too close to the paper, and carelessness 
engendered by weariness, for good writing habits are formed 
under the most watchful oversight of the teacher. Allowing 
the children to sit unoccupied and expecting and requiring 
them to be quiet and well-behaved during long periods of 
inactivity is manifestly contrary to all laws of child nature. 
What, then, can we give these children to do? 

The Aims of This Bulletin. 

This bulletin has been prepared in the hope of furnishing 
a partial answer to this ever-present question. 

It aims: 1. To suggest the relative amount of time each 
day to be devoted to free play and directed occupation ; 



Educative Seat Work. 



2. To show how the work of recitation and seat periods 
may be interrelated and made mutually helpful; 

3. To bring together from all available sources those types 
of directed occupation which primary children are likely to 
be able to pursue without the constant guiding presence of 
the teacher; 

4. To list those games or recreations which may be made 
available for the voluntary selection of the pupils in the 
periods allowed for free play, indoors and out. 

Shorter Hours as a Partial Solution. 

In many schools the session for primary pupils is five or 
six hours in length ; in the country school they come with their 
older brothers and sisters at nine and return with them at 
four, w^hile in many tow'ns and cities the second grade, if not 
the first, is expected to attend school from nine till three. 
Such sessions are too long under ordinary conditions, w^here 
one teacher has to work with many children or classes and 
the pupils are expected to conform to the system and order 
expected in the typical schoolroom. 

Where the pupils all live in the town or city, it is a com- 
paratively easy matter to divide the day into two sessions, 
wath a different group of pupils attending at each, or else 
to have one group come at nine and remain till say one 
o'clock, and another come at the morning recess and leave 
at the closing hour of the school day. thus giving each group 
the teacher's undivided attention for a part of the day, and 
bringing them together during the middle of the day for 
certain classes which may profitably be conducted with a large 
number of pupils. 

The difficulty is not so easily adjusted in the country 
schools, for here the children often come long distances, and 
it is not considered safe for them to return home alone. 
However, though this is sometimes true, it is not always so. 
In more than one case it has been found on investigation that 
it was entirely possible for the primary children to go home 
alone, and in other cases a very slight rearrangement of work 
has enabled the teacher to dismiss early those pupils who 
furnish the primary children's escort. I cannot too strongly 
emphasize the necessity of investigating this matter, and of 
arranging to shorten the school dav for some, if not all. of 



Educative Seat Work. 



the primary pupils. If out of three first grade children two 
can go home alone, don't keep them at school till four o'clock 
because the third must wait for an older companion. 

Any opposition to such a change on the part of the school 
patrons can usually be overcome by a mothers' meeting, in 
which the teacher may show the amount of her time daily 
which in any case one pupil or section may receive, and the 
large amount of time remaining when the children must work 
alone. She may then point out the possibility of giving the 
pupils exactly the same amount of her attention, as well as a 
sufficient time for seat work, in the shorter session which she 
advocates for them. Very few mothers are likely to oppose 
what they realize to be for their children's interest. 

Possible Help From Rearrangement of the Schedule. 

Shortening the session will undoubtedly help, but in many 
cases it does not entirely dispose of the problem. In over- 
crowded city grades there are so many children that the 
teacher must divide them into three or four groups or sec- 
tions for advantageous handling; in consolidated schools the 
wagoned pupils must remain through the whole school day; 
in one- or two-room schools many other classes demand the 
teacher's attention. All of these conditions result in the need 
for much seat work. As far as possible, long periods for such 
work should be avoided. It is better to have a number of 
short recitation periods during the day, interspersed with 
correspondingly short periods of seat work, than to compress 
the recitation into a few long periods with intermissions 
between of an hour or so. 

In the appendix to this bulletin will be found a very full 
plan for the work of a two-room school, suggesting advan- 
tageous methods of combining and alternating classes and pro- 
gramming the days'j5 recitations. The two-room type was 
selected because it is a common one in schools which give no 
high school work, and because two teachers is the smallest 
nmnber which may be expected to handle all the elementary 
classes satisfactorily. 

Function of Free Play and of Directed Work. 

The nature of the occupation will depend upon the purpose 
which it is intended to fulfill. It may be designed merely to 



8 Educative Seat Work. 

amuse the child or make bearable the long hours of waiting, 
or it may have a definite educational end. It is probably true 
that there is educational value of a kind in all of a child's play, 
no matter how desultory or undirected, but it would seem that 
in the school, if anywhere, there should be a positive attempt 
to get a maximum educational value from the child's occu- 
pations during those periods when he is not being directly 
taught by the teacher; and that, if possible, we should plan 
for him some form of mental or physical activity which will 
be real work, a genuine beginning of study, in the best sense 
of that term, and yet be sufficiently interesting, attractive, and 
varied in nature to dispense in the main with the necessity 
of the teacher's oversight to keep him engaged upon it. 

Yet we must qualify this statement if we are to conserve, 
as well as develop, the child's powers. Work is work, when 
all has been said, no matter how agreeable it may be, and 
though usually we may hope the pleasurableness of the occu- 
pation will be sufficient to ensure the necessary concentra- 
tion of the child's attention upon it, there will surely come 
times when the authority of the teacher will be needed to 
compel the performance. That this compulsion may not be 
of inevitable daily occurrence, we must limit the tasks to fit 
the small powers that are to perform them. It is for this 
reason that the last quarter of the day has been left altogether 
for free play, and also that the occupation time of the third 
((uarter has been shortened to thirty minutes.* Other allow- 
ances may prove to be necessary in special cases. But, granted 
<'m assignment adjusted in difficulty to the pupils' powers, we 
may feel justified in rigidly holding the pupil to performance, 
and thus may, from his first school year, train him to habits 
of diligent application. 

In a school which came under my observation, the primary 
teacher made an enthusiastic beginning of seat work, but by 
the third month of school she had ceased to provide for it at 
all. Her reason for this was that the children had grown tired 
of the work, and didn't care to do it any more. There were 
two mistakes in her procedure. She had given them an over- 
dose of the few occupations which were suggested to her, 
allowing the children to pursue them for hours at a time. 
For the first few days or weeks they were attractive, but at 



See Schedule page 67. 



Educative Seat Work. 



last they palled. What was needed was gradation and vari- 
ation. The exercises should have been increased in difficulty, 
given new phases of interest, new modes of application, as 
the children progressed in acquisition and development. 
Moreover, she had regarded the occupations only in the light 
of a pastime, so that the fact that the children did not wish 
to perform them was sufficient justification for their discon- 
tinuance. Perhaps it was, if the exercises were not to progress 
in difficulty. But they should have so progressed, and the 
teacher then should have insisted on their performance. 

The teacher was hardly to blame. She had already so 
much to occupy her time that it is quite possible she had not 
time to plan a carefully graded series of exercises. For the 
assistance of teachers laboring under similar difficulties this 
bulletin has been prepared. 

Importance of Providing Material for Seat Work. 

In every case, especial thought has been given to the 
difficulty of procuring materials for work which involve any 
money outlay, and all possible expedients have been suggested 
to reduce expenses to a minimum. They should not be 
expected to be nil; equipment for educative occupation of an 
industrial type is at least as necessary for real education as 
the customary equipment of textbooks and tablets, and it 
should, in fact, must, come to be regarded as a legitimate 
expense either of the school or the individual. It is suggested 
that until such equipment comes to be included in the regular 
expense budget it may well be made one of the good things 
for which the Patrons' League or the Mothers' Meeting 
labors. 

It is in many cases true that the reason why equipment is 
not provided is that its cost is believed to be greater than it 
really is. For the benefit of teachers who wish to get some 
idea of the cost of simple materials, and the addresses of 
reputable houses where it may be ordered, a list of prices and 
addresses has been placed at the end of this bulletin. It is 
suggested that it will be well for teachers to send for catalogs 
from these or similar firms, since they will not only be found 
helpful in supplying needed material, but will also ofifer many 
suggestions as to other desirable equipment or types of work 
which are not mentioned in this bulletin. 



10 Educative Seat Work. 

TYPES OF SEAT WORK FOR THE 
PRIMARY GRADES 

The various suggestions for seat work which are hsted 
in this chapter have been rather roughly grouped under the 
head of one or the other recognized school subjects. While 
it is quite possible that the work mentioned under Reading 
may be used with profit, for example, under Number, an 
effort has been made to put each piece of work in that con- 
nection where it is most likely to be found helpful, or where 
a need for it is likely to arise. In the following chapters will 
be found suggestions which it is hoped will enable the teacher 
to make the seat work a vitally important part of the children's 
education, supplementing and enriching that which they do 
in class and under her immediate supervision; but in this 
chapter little more has been attempted than a mere listing 
and classification, as follows : 

Reading, Word Study, Literature, Language. 

Materials : Cards on which words are printed or written 
for sentence building, etc., letter cards, grains of corn, water- 
melon seeds, pegs, etc. 

1. After teaching several words, provide each pupil with 
about five copies, in script, of each word taught. Require 
that they be sorted out into rows, all of one kind in a row. 
(N. B. — Teach the children first of all to turn all the cards 
face up, or else see that the word is written on both sides. It 
will be better still if the word is written on one side and 
printed on the other.) 

2. Give the children scissors and pages of old magazines 
or newspapers, or worn-out books. Let them find on the 
sheets they have words which they have learned, and cut them 
out. These words may be pasted on sheets of equal size and 
bound together into a complete vocabulary of the words 
as learned. Or they may be pasted on small cards and used 
as suggested below. For suggestions for booklets see "Dic- 
tionaries." number 17, below. 

3. Give pupils pictures of objects and word cards which 
name them. Require them to couple corresponding picture 
and word. The same may be done with action words and 
color words. 



Educative Seat Work. H 

4. Leave on the board the sentences which have formed 
the day's reading lesson. Require the pupils to build each 
of them with the words in their envelopes. (It is presumed 
that as new words are learned they will be added to the initial 
stock. ) 

5. Require that original sentences be made by using the 
word cards. (N. B. — In connection with 3 and 4, above, will 
come the first lessons in the use of capitals and punctuation 
marks. Care should be taken to provide words beginning with 
capitals for use at the beginning of sentences, and a number 
of periods and question marks for each envelope. Before 
having the children begin to build the sentences you have left 
on the board, call their attention to the difference between a 
word beginning a sentence and the same word elsewhere, and 
to the mark used to show completion of the sentence. Better 
use only statements the first time the work is done, and later 
introduce questions. Be very careful to punctuate correctly 
your own board work. 

(N. B. 2 — For the benefit of teachers who may feel that 
they have not time to write all the words the first grade pupils 
need in their envelopes, it may be suggested that the writing 
of them will furnish excellent writing exercise for the children 
of tht third or fourth grade. If it is considered a thing to 
be proud of to be able to write these words well enough for the 
little folks, "whom we don't want to have to learn anything 
but good writing," we have a motive which may be used to 
hold the third graders to doing their very best work in making 
these copies. Some of them, you will find, can write suffi- 
ciently well, and others may be led to approach this good form 
by a skilful use of the motive.) 

6. Give children script and print forms of the same words. 
Recjuire them to couple each script word with its correspond- 
ing print form. 

7. Same as 3, above, using printed cards instead of script 
forms. 

8. Same as 4, above, with printed words. (N. B. — Some- 
times the children may wish to make sentences, using words 
they have not. Permit this to a limited extent, directing that 
they leave a space where they have not the word, but only, 
for instance, one space in a sentence. Such words should be 
given in a succeeding reading lesson. ) It will often be found 



12 Educative Seat Work. 

valuable to let the children read each others' original stories. 
That this may be practicable, the sentence building should 
be done before the reading period, instead of after. To this 
end, the first and second grade periods for reading may occa- 
sionally be interchanged to give the first graders opportunity 
to construct their sentences. (See Daily Programs appended 
hereto. ) These stories may soon come to be valuable language 
work if the practice is early begun of giving a title for the 
group of stories to be built. 

9. Out of exercises like 7 should grow the first written 
language work. Wherever blackboard space is available, 
permit one or more children, as a special privilege, to write 
on the board "stories" for the rest of the class to read. Legi- 
bility and neatness may readily be emphasized, "for the sake 
of the children who are to read it." Succeeding writing les- 
sons may be given to special practice on words or letters that 
such board work showed to be "hard for us." Do not limit the 
children who are composing the story to words the class has 
had. Encourage any tendency to use new words which the 
child who is writing may get, if he needs them, from the older 
pupils or from the teacher, or, if he is clever, from the books. 

10. Write words or letters on the pupils' desks, or on 
big cards, and let them cover the outlines with pegs or grains 
of corn. This may be used very early in the year. 

11. Given letters, to build words of the reading and writ- 
ing lessons, or words from phonic lists. To be used not 
sooner than the second half of the first year's work. 

12. Illustrate with drawings or cuttings stories or poems 
that have been read or told. (See, under Construction, sug- 
gestions for kinds of paper cutting.) 

13. Build, on the sand table, the scene and events of 
stories read or told. There is almost no limit to the work 
which may be done along this line. At first, of course, the 
children will need to work with the teacher, to gain an idea 
of materials and their use. Later they may work alone, and 
the little scene may grow from day to day, the children bring- 
ing from home whatever they can find to help out. Con- 
struction lessons of different kinds, cardboard, sewing, weav- 
ing, etc., may be used to supplement their inventiveness. Sug- 
gestive topics for sand-table work are the farm, garden, 
schoolyard, school, Indian Life, Eskimo Land, The Three 



Educative Seat Work. 13 

Bears, Little Red Riding Hood. In the stories, the several 
scenes may be separately portrayed. Useful materials for 
sand-table construction are twigs for trees, a sheet of glass 
over blue paper for water, tin foil for silver articles, clay for 
shaping animals, clothespins for people (wishbones with heads 
of wax or some similar substance may also be used, or dolls 
of rags or corn shucks), bits of cloth for clothing, broomstraw 
to build fences, and various articles of furniture, flour and salt 
for snow, two parts of flour to one of salt, cardboard and 
paper for buildings, vehicles, furniture, etc. If clay is not to 
be had, cut paper figures of people or animals, paste together 
two thicknesses, and insert between tooth picks or straws to 
stick in the sand and enable them to stand upright. As soon 
as this sort of work begins to take hold of your pupils, 
encourage the collection of various articles that seem likely 
to be of use, bright paper, stiff cardboard, pictures, etc. Have 
a drawer or cupboard in which such miscellaneous material 
may be kept for the children's undirected use whenever they 
feel a need for it. 

14. Prepare stage setting or costumes for simple dramat- 
ization. Hardly possible below the third grade. 

15. In some schools, or with some classes, puppet shows 
may ^e possible, after the order of the old-fashioned Punch 
and Judy show. Stories or poems that admit of dramatiza- 
tion may also be used for such puppet shows. The scenery 
may be made by painting, drawing, or cutting, as may the 
stage furniture and the actors. Any teachers who feel that it 
will be within the range of possibility for their pupils to do 
such work are referred to Beard's "American Boy's Hand- 
book," published by Scribner, in which will be found, among 
other interesting things for boys to make and do, a full 
description and directions for making a shadow puppet show. 

16. Make language booklets of various sorts. Among 
these may be an illustrated alphabet; calendar record for the 
month; bird, flower, or leaf record, geography booklet, illus- 
trated quotations from some author or book that is being 
studied, etc. 

Illustrated Alphabet. The children collect pictures of ob- 
jects whose names begin with the different letters of the alpha- 
bet. They may be set to look for letters too, or the teacher 
may provide them. Magazine backs, advertising matter on 



14 Educative Seat Work. 

large calendars, or newspaper titles will provide many, which 
the children may cut out. Make the leaves of the book of 
manila drawing paper, or even wrapping paper, if necessary, 
about six by nine inches. On each leaf have pasted a letter, 
at the top, and below it the object of which it is the initial. 
One or two suggestions as to arrangement will be helpful in 
the beginning. 

Weather Record for the month. For the smallest children, 
drawings, cuttings, or pasted pictures may be used to show 
the weather; the second or third graders may each day write 
simple sentences. For example : "Today is January 4. It 
is a cold day. The sky is blue. The wind is blowing." With 
the leaves for the whole month bind in a copy of the month's 
calendar. 

Bird, tree, or flozver record, similar to the above. "March 
4. Today I saw a bluebird. He was on a fence. His back 
was blue. His breast was red. He was singing. I like to 
hear him sing." A page should be given to each day. Some- 
times the children will want to illustrate the work (which 
they should be encouraged to do), by drawing, cutting, or 
pasting. 

Illustrated Quotations. Encourage the children to make 
their own selections, copy, and illustrate. On one page of a 
Robert Louis Stevenson booklet may appear : 
"The rain is raining all around; 
It falls on field and tree;" 

accompanied by a picture or drawing of the rain falling on 
trees, flowers, and grass. 

Geography Booklet. Have the children find, cut out, and 
paste on each page of the book the picture of some land or 
water form, or whatever is the subject of the geography 
lessons. It may be, perhaps, the scenes in the life of Gemila, 
the Child of the Desert, or just scenes in their own home life. 
Under each picture have a few sentences written, telling the 
story of the picture. 

17. Dictionaries. The third, and perhaps the second, 
grade children may collect spelling words — all those they have 
to ask for and the words they miss. Keep in a loose-leaf 
booklet of twenty-six leaves just wide enough for one word 
on a line and about eight inches long. If there are more 



Educative Seat Work. 15 

words under some letter than will go on a page, insert extra 
pages. Use these collections of words for reviews, for spell- 
ing matches, for words to use in written or oral sentences, and 
for references. 

The dictionaries, and all the booklets described above, 
should have decorated covers. (See Construction Work for 
suggestions for decoration.) 

18. Short written compositions. These may be used in 
the third grade, within limits. Avoid them, as seat work, 
if the pupils work badly when unsupervised. Types of com- 
position, for those who can handle them, are reproductions 
of short stories, poems written from memory, simple picture 
stories, or stories from brief suggestions. If these can be 
assembled into a book of the child's own making, for reading 
to the younger children at home, for a gift to Mother, or to 
send to Grandmother, so much the better. It may even suffice 
to collect them for the child's own interest in rereading. 

Letters may also be used for this seat composition, if you 
have a real correspondence going on between the children of 
your school and those of some other school, preferably in an 
entirely different part of the country. Have these letters 
try to picture to the faraway child the conditions of this child's 
life h^re, his home, school, work, play, etc. 

19. Copy work, of memory gems, short stories, or poems, 
may be used in grades I to III, as far as it can be made of any 
real interest to the child, or be given any relation to his life or 
needs. Good work must be the only kind permitted, that is, 
the best work the child can do. A specially good use for such 
copies is the making of a collection of the words of songs 
learned in the grade, as they are taken up. 

In some schools it may be desirable that some of the 
written language of the pupils should consist of dictated 
sentences, previously prepared by the pupils. Such prepara- 
tion is a legitimate occupation for the seat work period. In 
one first grade the following procedure was found very help- 
ful. The children each morning, after they began to do any 
written work, were provided with one sheet of paper, of 
uniform size and shape, and on this all the written work of 
the day was done. After the fourth month of school, part 
of this written work consisted of the writing, from dictation, 
of verv easv sentences. The material used in this case was the 



16 Educative Seat Work. 

very first part of the year's reading. On the first page of the 
reader were the words, ''This is Kate." The children knew 
the words; they had seen them in many connections. Their 
attention was called to the capitalization, and to the period, 
and they were directed to copy the sentence twice and to try 
to remember just how it looked. This having been done in 
a study period the children were required to fold their papers 
just below the copy they had made so that the copy would be 
turned under and only blank paper appear for their writing. 
They were then to write, from dictation, the same sentence. 
Having written it, they turned the folded sentences up to sight, 
and compared the two, while the teacher passed around the 
class and rapidly placed some mark of approval on the correct 
work, both copy and dictation, and perhaps showed to the 
class those papers which were notably neat and well arranged. 
The succeeding pages of the reader were, in this class, used 
day by day, only a few sentences being taken at one time; at 
first only one or two. 

The teacher who has any blackboard space available, or 
who can make any substitute for it, will find it better to give 
the children for study and later dictation, sentences based on 
the special interest of the day or month. For example : At 
Christmas she might write about Santa Claus or stockings; 
at Easter she might provide sentences about eggs and rabbits ; 
on March 17 the story of St. Patrick might be used, and so on. 
Whatever the subject, the sentences for study should be 
written on the blackboard in good form for the children to 
study and to copy, and later should be dictated. Good work 
may be stimulated by allowing the children who make careful 
copies to use a special quality of paper, kept for the purpose, 
for the dictation, and by encouraging the decoration of the 
papers. Thus, the Christmas dictation may have a heading 
of Christmas trees, drawn and colored, or cut in silhouette and 
pasted ; the Easter exercise may be decorated with rabbits ; 
and on St. Patrick's day clovers might form the basis of the 
design. Whether this kind of work shall begin in the latter 
part of the first year or be postponed till the second grade will 
depend upon the advancement of the pupils, and their ability 
to write. If it forces them into cramped and strained posi- 
tions, it should be postponed. In general, it will be wise to let 
the first grade do as much of their writing as possible on the 
blackboard. 



Educative Seat Work. 17 



Number. 

Materials : Sticks of varying lengths, one-inch, two-inch, 
and so on up to six-inch, tooth picks, shoe pegs, watermelon 
seed, peas, grains of corn, berries, acorns, spools, squares of 
cardboard, an inch on a side, figures cut from large calendar 
pads, wheat and oat straw, pins, scissors, etc. 

1. Give the children spool boxes containing a variety of 
materials — sticks of varying lengths, square inches, oblongs, 
triangles, pegs, seeds, etc. Let them make objects of various 
kinds by combining for each any two of the articles in their 
envelopes. Extend this to combinations of three, four, etc., 
as the children feel the limitations of the small number and 
wish greater scope. Let the extension be sufficiently gradual 
to enable the children to realize each number before they pass 
to the next, and continue the work only so long as it seems to 
be profitable. 

2. Square inches and pegs, or similar material, may be 
used in a counting exercise. Let the children lay the squares 
to represent the desks in the school room, both as to their 
number and position. Place a peg to represent each child as 
he sits before his desk. This may be elaborated by having 
differently colored pegs to represent the boys and girls, or 
to represent the pupils in the various classes. After laying 
these, the children may draw the crude diagram they have 
constructed, to take home to show their mothers how their 
school room looks, where they sit and how many children 
there are in the school, in their class. Should any pupil wish 
to use a round cardboard tablet for the stove, or in any other 
way similarly distinguish various articles of furniture, he 
should be permitted to do so. Such exercises as these will 
give the pupils ideas of number and extent, though they may 
not yet be able to name the special numbers in their order. 
The teacher may realize on these exercises by having the 
children, with their representations before them, tell how 
many desks they made in their pictures, and calling on other 
members of the class to compare this with the number they 
have pictured, and with the number in the room. Should 
it become apparent, as it may certainly be expected to. that 
some of the children cannot count well enough to answer these 
questions, the time is most favorable to suggest learning how 



18 Educative Seat Work. 

to count, and a number of definite lessons in counting may 
be given in the regular number period. 

3. Give the children sticks of different lengths. Let them 
sort them into piles, with all of a length together. Let them 
invent combinations using sticks of dift'erent lengths. For 
example, with two-inch and one-inch sticks, make a ladder; 
with six-inch and two-inch sticks make a railroad, using the 
two-inch sticks for ties and the six-inch ones for rails; make 
a fence, a rake, etc. Count the sticks, count the inches, see 
how many inch sticks it would take to make the same thing 
that is made with one six-inch stick, etc. Many interesting 
objects that may be thus constructed are pictured in the 
Industrial Primary Reader, published by D. C. Heath & Co. 
Price, 30 cents. 

4. Group splints in consecutive piles, one in the first pile, 
two in the second, three in the third, four in the fourth, etc. 
Similarly, arrange square inches, one in the first place, then 
two, etc. 

5. Group splints or squares as above and under each pile 
place the correct figure, which may be cut from large calendar 
pads. The children may be given one leaf from such a pad, 
and allowed to cut it up into its component squares, which will 
provide the figure representation of all numbers to thirty-one. 
These should be kept in envelopes, and used as above indi- 
cated. 

6. Arrange the numbers cut from calendar pads in con- 
secutive order ; begin with any of them, and arrange the others 
in reverse order, counting backward ; arrange them so as to 
count by twos, by threes, by fives. Use after oral lessons, 
in which the children learn how to count in this way. 

7. Provide the children with splints, squares, or other 
counters, and word cards bearing the words and and are. Let 
them lay these on their desks to show the number facts they 
have been studying, or others which they may be able to work 
out for themselves. Thus, the pupil may lav sticks and words 
as follows: | | and | | | are | | | | |, | | | | 'and | are | | | | \, 
I I I and I I are I I I I |, etc. 

8. Lay sticks as above, and under each equality express 
the same in figures, thus : 

1 I and 1 I I are I 1 I I |. 

2 and 3 are 5. 



Educative Seat Work. 19 

9. Express with figures and words only, the equations that 
have- been learned, thus: 2 and 3 are 5. 

10. Give the children cards bearing number combinations, 
such as 2 and 4 are — , and let them fit the correct answers, 
which have been distributed at the same time as the combina- 
tions. 

11. Let the children themselves prepare the combinations 
whose use is suggested in 10. They may rule and cut the 
strips, paste on them the figures from calendar pads, and 
either make the symbols for plus and are, or else paste on the 
words and and are which have been written by some of the 
pupils who write the best hands. It will add interest if the 
combinations are sometimes exchanged, and those made by 
one child fitted by another. Further interest might be added 
by making the exercise in the form of a match, and scoring 
the number of correct combinations made by each child in the 
period alotted for the work. 

12. Paste on cards numbers cut from calendar pads, for 
drill in quick column addition. The number of figures on each 
card will depend on and increase with the pupils' advance. 
The children may make these cards too, measuring them to 
any directed dimension, ruling, and cutting them out, as well 
as pasting. 

13. Cut paper circles for making number cards like dom- 
inoes. It will probably be best to provide the children with a 
cardboard circle, or else with a spool to use as a pattern in 
drawing their circles. Use dark paper for them. Then mount 
these circles on cards, also prepared by the pupils, to show 
the various combinations. Such domino arrangements of dots 
are shown in Pierce's First Steps in Arithmetic, and in Colaw 
and Ellwood's Primary Book. 

14. Make cardboard money for playing store. Use real 
pieces of money for patterns. Either paste on each piece of 
toy money the correct figure, cut from a calendar pad, or else 
write the figures on them. The former will show more plainly. 

15. String peas or corn softened in water, and inch-long 
straws, or white and red corn. Make various combinations. 
For example, alternate two peas with one straw, the needle 
running the long way of the straw: alternate two peas with 
three grains of corn ; one pea, one straw, and two grains ; and 
so on, in various combinations. To prevent the straws from 



20 Educative Seat Work. 

splitting, pour boiling water over them, and when cool, dry 
by wrapping loosely in a cloth or towel. The numbers used 
may be those you are especially trying at the time to teach. It 
is a good plan to have the children lay the materials to be used 
on their desks in the order chosen, and have the teacher see 
that they are correctly placed before they begin to string. 
The pencil groove on the desk is a good place to lay them, to 
prevent rolling. If you have kindergarten beads among the 
materials furnished you, they also may be strung, but certainly 
use should be made of native materials in making chains that 
the children are to keep. In addition to directed arrange- 
ments, the children may be allowed to originate, with the 
single specification that there be a regular pattern selected and 
approved before the string is really made. 

16. Enlist the aid of the second and third grade pupils in 
making the sticks of various lengths that the first grade pupils 
need, as well as those that they themselves need for the stick 
and pea or stick and pin work in making objects for the sand 
table or doll house. See numbers 24 and 25 below. Let them 
use wheat, oat, or broom straw, and measure and cut the 
required lengths. 

17. In connection with some such measuring need, make a 
ruler. As long as they prove sufficient, the square inches may 
be used in measuring, the length of one side being an inch. 
For the ruler, furnish the children with strips of cardboard, 
or let them make them out of tablet backs, each strip being 
one inch wide, and six inches long. Let them mark each strip 
off into inches, using the side of one of their square inches as 
a measure. 

18. Use sticks of varying lengths in designing borders for 
booklets. Many attractive designs may be worked out by 
parallel or other arrangements of lines, and these may be 
better represented by sticks, which may be easily removed if 
unsatisfactory, than by drawing. After a satisfactory border 
has been thus planned it may be drawn, and the ruler may be 
used to make the lines the same length as the sticks. 

19. Make use of the rulers the children have made in much 
of the construction work. Opportunity may be made for this 
in the seat work periods by having the children, after there 
has been a folding lesson, make from memory the same object. 
(See further suggestions under Construction.) 



Educative Seat Work. 21 

20. Use the rulers to make paper strips for weaving or the 
making of paper chains. At first make these strips an inch 
wide, and of lengths varying with the use to be made of them. 

21. Make a ruler marked off into inches and half inches. 
This must necessarily have been preceded by a lesson in 
which the half is taught. It might be introduced by the desir- 
ability of narrower strips for the chains or the weaving. 
Have the children fold in halves an inch wide strip, discover, 
and if possible, name the half inches that result, and use them 
in marking the ruler. Use this ruler for measuring paper for 
strips for chains, weaving, etc., and for any other measure- 
ments that the children find they need to make. 

22. Rule a calendar sheet for the month, making the 
squares for the dates, etc., an inch on a side. Thus the calen- 
dar for any month except February would necessarily be seven 
inches across and five inches from top to bottom, besides the 
space needed for the names of the days and the name of the 
month. This calendar may be made at the beginning of the 
month, decorated with an appropriate drawing or silhouette 
cutting, and a weather record kept by appropriate pictures in 
each square. Later on, the squares may be made only half 
an inch on a side, or it may be found that the first grade chil- 
dren ^ill need to use for theirs an inch, while the second and 
third grade pupils may use the half inch. 

23. Draw a clock face, copying the position of the hands 
at the time of drawing. After several lessons of this sort 
have others in which the face is drawn from memory, to 
indicate different hours. This may be continued at intervals 
all through the year, as long as it seems profitable. These 
drawings may be mounted on cards and used in a drill on 
telling time, the card being given to the child who names it 
correctly, and the largest number thus obtained winning the 
game. Naturally, to be used in this way, the drawing must be 
good. To this end, it will be well to teach the children how to 
draw a circle with a pin and a paper radius, and how to divide 
its circumference into twelfths. The following directions are 
given for any teacher who wishes to know how to make such 
a division exactly. Using the radius as a measure, mark the 
circumference into six equal arcs, thus : Put a dot at any point 
of the circumference, which we will call A. Lay one end of 
the radius at A and move it until the other end just touches 



22 Educative Seat Work. 

the rim of the circle. This places B. In the same way locate 
C, etc. This divides the circle into six equal arcs, or curves. 
Incidentally, the children will enjoy joining them to make a 
six-pointed star. But to return to the clock. Divide each 
of these six arcs into halves, and we have now twelve dots to 
aid us in locating the twelve numbers on the clock face. These 
numbers may be cut from calendar pads and pasted on, or this 
opportunity may be utilized to give the children exercise in 
making the Roman numerals up to XII. 

24. Stick and pea work gives opportunity for the use of 
measurements. Let the children measure and cut off their 
own lengths of broomstraw, or whatever you use for the 
sticks. Articles that may be so made are chairs, beds, fences, 
ladders, frame for toy screen, towel rack, frame for table, 
Japanese umbrella frame, etc. As the children progress, 
directions may be given on the board for the dimensions for 
any articles that need to be made of uniform size. (See the 
Graded Classics First Reader, page 48, for illustration.) 

25. All the objects mentioned in 24, above, except perhaps 
the Japanese umbrella frame, may also be made, and more 
realistically, by joining sticks with pins used just as nails 
would be in making articles of wood. Other objects possible 
to construct with straws and pins are hay wagons, sled frames, 
rakes, etc. 

26. After a manual-training period in which they have 
been shown what is to be done, and how it is to be done, the 
children may make bean bags of stout cloth, backhanded 
around three sides for a seam, and overhanded on the fourth 
side after the beans are in. Use these bags in either number 
periods or in periods given to play, to throw into a series of 
three concentric circles, of which the central, or smallest, 
has the largest value, the outer the smallest. Vary the value 
of each circle according to the number progress of the children. 
Thus, for the beginners, they might be 1. 3. and 5, or 1, 5, 
and 10, while the third grade pupils might use larger numbers 
which they and the teacher felt they needed practice in hand- 
ling, such as 9, 38, and 76, or 44, 66. 88, etc. Let the children 
add their own scores. This adding may be used for seat work 



Educative Seat Work. 23 

27. Paper cutting and pasting may be used as another 
means of representing number facts. For example, the chil- 
dren may illustrate the old rhyme of the "Ten little Indians," 
of whom one was constantly departing, on one or the other 
pretext. Paper soldiers may be made to march in ranks of 
two, three, four, or any other arrangement selected; Bopeep's 
sheep. Little Boy Blue's cows, may be grouped instead of the 
time-worn apples and oranges ; the animals may go into the 
ark "two by two;" an orchard of apple trees may be laid off 
on any desired plan ; etc. Many things that the children hap- 
pen to be interested in at the time may be substituted for the 
more formal sticks, pegs, etc., to represent number facts and 
ideas, to vary and enliven the necessary drill. 

Construction, Color, Form. 

1. Exercises in discrimination. Given a handful of pegs 
of various colors, pick out all of any one color, or sort into 
piles of one color each. Given miscellaneous colored objects, 
group all of one color together. 

2. Given a seed and flower catalog. Cut out all the flowers 
and fruits you know are red. If correct (approved by the 
teacher) color and mount on red color chart. So with any 
coloi*. 

3. Color outline pictures found in magazines and cut out. 
This sort of work needs preliminary teaching before the chil- 
dren are thrown on their own responsibility. Coloring the 
outline pictures furnished by the Audubon Society will be good 
work. Children may outline from simple stencils, then color. 
These colored pictures may be used in various ways — as, sub- 
jects for simple picture stories ; to decorate booklets, 
especially, in the case of the Audubon Society pictures, to 
illustrate bird study booklets; to frame for the doll house; to 
make a scrapbook, etc. 

4. Make wall paper, linoleum, tiling, etc., for furnishing a 
doll house. All of these furnish exercises in much of the 
formal designing that is sometimes such a bugbear in drawing. 
For example, if the children need to measure inches, and draw 
parallel lines with the ruler, such an exercise may be made 
pleasuable by turning it into the making of oilcloth for the 
kitchen or bathroom of the doll house. After the lines are 
drawn vertically, they may be crossed by horizontal lines, and 



24 Educative Seat Work. 

the resulting checkerboard pattern may be colored in its alter- 
nate squares with crayons or water colors. More difficult 
patterns may be worked out, if desired. Wall paper may be 
made simply by a pretty arrangement of parallel lines. For 
example, there may be two lines a quarter of an inch apart, 
then an inch space, then three lines a quarter of an inch apart. 
Or lines may alternate with bands of color, a quarter or a 
half an inch wide, to simulate the ribbon-striped wall papers. 
Or a simple design, like fleur-de-lis, a conventionalized tulip, 
or some other form that the children can copy by means of a 
stencil or a paper patern, may be repeated at regular inter- 
vals over the paper. A stencil is made by drawing the desired 
design on stiff paper and cutting out the paper within the out- 
line. This is then used as a guide for the pencil in drawing the 
repeated form on the paper, to be later colored. A pattern 
may sometimes be cut of stiff paper, and drawn around at each 
repeat. The ruler will be called into use to arrange the figure 
in its proper positions for the repetition. Sometimes it is well 
to have the wall paper all in a solid color, and only the border 
showing a design. The teacher has much opportunity in this 
connection to develop her pupil's' taste. What is suitable in the 
kitchen, the dining room, the hall, the bedroom, etc., should 
be considered, as should the relative size of the space to be 
papered and the size of the pattern, and the suitability of the 
color. 

It will be seen that all this cannot be done by the pupils 
without any assistance from the teacher. Such instruction 
as is necessary should be given in a drawing or manual train- 
ing period, and the work should be completed in following 
seat work periods. The teacher will need to remember the 
unformed condition of her pupil's taste, and since she cannot 
give them her constant oversight in their designing, she will 
need to give them some good models to copy or to select 
among, rather than throw them very largely upon their own 
devices. 

5. String varicolored straws or beads in regular pattern. 
This has been already mentioned in connection with Number, 
and is repeated here on account of the opportunity which it 
affords to give exercise in color combinations. Seat work 
of this type should follow class lessons on harmonizing colors, 
and it may be well to have before the pupils sample harmonies 



Educative Seat Work. 25 

for their imitation or choice, for the same reason that dictated 
the suggestion for the use of model designs, above. 

6. Sewing cards. Outline pictures of simple objects, 
calendar squares for the month, pupil's name written large 
on fairly stout paper, etc. The children may make such cards 
by tracing a pattern on a stiff card and pricking equidistant 
holes for the needle in the outline. The teacher will find many 
suitable designs in Milton Bradley's catalog of kindergarten 
material and school supplies. There is considerable danger that 
this kind of work will be overdone. Try to limit it by finding 
some real use for the work done in it — covers for needle 
books, stamp books, etc., for Christmas gifts; decoration or 
illustration for various booklets, etc. At first provide the 
children with needles already threaded, and with the thread 
knotted; in later manual training periods teach them how to 
do this for themselves. 

7. Furnish a doll house, as referred to in 4, above. This 
should be related to reading, geography, and language work, 
and will furnish occupation for months. "Tiling" may be 
woven of paper strips, and rugs of rag, yarn, or raffia; sheets 
and curtains may be hemmed, and the latter decorated with a 
simple stencil ; quilts pieced ; mattresses made and stuffed with 
hair, *wool, or milkweed and cat-tail silk ; bead portieres made 
of berries and straws strung in patterns; wall paper designed 
and made ; all kinds furniture made of cardboard, paper, sticks 
and pins or peas; a hammock woven of cord; tiny towels of 
fringed paper or cloth with a simple border design; a broom 
and clock constructed ; a seesaw in the attic play room ; potted 
geraniums, with corks for pots, and artificial or paper flowers, 
in the kitchen window; chandeliers or lamps, with decorative 
shades ; perhaps some tiny candles made by the old-fasioned 
process of "dipping," and set in candlesticks of clay or tinfoil; 
pictures cut out, colored, and simply framed — these are some 
of the many objects that will suggest themselves to the 
resourceful teacher or pupils. By all means encourage the 
children to take the initiative. 

8. Scrapbooks of all kinds, from the eight-sheet book of 
dressmaker's cambric, pasted with bright pictures to amuse 
the baby, to the "paper doll house," profitable work for fourth 
and fifth grades, if time permit. Collections of flowers, 
pressed, fastened with gummed strips, and named; leaf col- 



26 Educative Seat Work. 

lections ditto; postcards; stamps of our country, with the 
name of the portrait on each written by it; or just pretty 
pictures, prettily arranged, are some variations of the scrap- 
book idea. The ''paper doll house" referred to above is made 
by cutting out furniture from catalogs and arranging it in 
various rooms, a wide page representing a room; wall paper 
or children's drawing or weaving serving for floor covering, 
etc. 

9. Knitted reins, made on a spool, of zephyr or soft cord. 

10. "Posters," pictures made by cutting or pasting, with 
different colored papers. For example, an Eskimo poster 
that was very effective had dull blue or gray paper for the 
sky, white paper pasted below for snow, sleds and dogs cut 
out of gray paper and pasted on in the desired position ; houses 
cut out of white paper and pasted against the blue sky; Eski- 
mos cut out of canton flannel, with a paper face pasted under 
the opening cut in the hood. A modification of this is the 
landscape drawn with colored crayons, on which cut out 
figures are pasted. 

11. Valentines, of all kinds. Lacey hearts, made by fold- 
ing and cutting double, as in making chains of paper dolls; 
hearts cut of red paper and mounted on white; flowers cut 
from pretty wall paper and mounted on cards, or arranged 
with folded paper "lifters" at their corners; cupids cut out and 
pasted on paper hearts, etc. 

12. Christmas gifts: pretty boxes to hold candy or nuts, 
of folded paper ; woven paper blotter tops ; paper lanterns and 
chains for the tree; strings of popcorn; pillowtops; pin- 
cushions, needlebooks, etc., in cross-stitch, for the third- 
graders who can get the material; iron holders of woven 
zephyr or yarn, or of flanned coarsely buttonholed about the 
edges ; napkin rings of raffia : little baskets and trays of honey- 
suckle vine or grasses, or cornshucks, dyed, if desired; etc. 

13. "Maybaskets" may be sug^sted, and much of the 
Christmas weaving and braiding reviewed and extended for 
Mayday. 

14. Easter eggs, made of blown shells, with painted faces 
and various styles of headdress; or Easter cards, made simi- 
larly to the valentines, but with eggs, rabbits, and lilies as the 
basis of the decorations, instead of cupids and hearts. 

15. Simple sewing, for the third grade, and perhaps for a 
few of the younger pupils, may include articles that have been 



Educative Seat "Work. 27 

already mentioned, and much else : workbags, bags to hold 
individual drinking cups, bags for the boys marbles, bags to be 
hung at the side of the desk and hold the busywork material 
when it is not in use, pin cushions of two pieces of cardboard, 
covered and whipped together, towels and dishcloths or dust- 
cloths hemmed for the schoolroom, fancy-work aprons ; sheets, 
curtains, and patch-work quilts for the doll house, perhaps tiny 
sofa cushions too; doll clothes, Indian clothes for the Indian 
dolls on the sand table, tiny moccasins made of scraps of old 
kid gloves, peanut dolls dressed in Chinese clothing, the hick- 
ory nut doll our grandmothers used to dress like a quaint old 
lady — do not these give at least something on which to begin, 
with the assurance that if we keep our eyes open we will find 

met 
these. 

The sewing cards, suggested above, may be supplemented 
or extended by simple outline embroidery or cross stitch, 
applied to articles for the doll house, or to gifts of various 
kinds. "Turkey red" outline cotton may be used in working 
doilies, and the like, in outline stitch. Burlap is best for the 
cross stitch, the squared kind being desirable. The same kind 
of work may be done on checked gingham, with white embriod- 
ery Cotton, but it is not so pretty. 

16. Weaving and basketry have been referred to incident- 
ally several times before, but they need more special mention. 
The weaving may begin with the first graders with very simple 
paper weaving, using inch wide strips. The mats and strips 
should be measured, ruled, and cut by the children. If this 
work is too hard for the first grade, call in the help of the 
second and even the third grade. Later the strips may be 
made half an inch wide, and then a quarter of an inch. These 
mats may be made into covers for booklets, envelopes for 
sachets, etc., or utilized in the doll house. When the children 
gain ability to work out pretty designs, they should be used 
as tiling in the doll house. 

Another form of weaving is done on simple looms. These 
may be made of a stiff piece of cardboard, such as the back 
of a large tablet. An inch from each end draw a line across the 
cardboard. Beginning an inch from the side, on the line, 
measure off spaces one-half inch apart and put dots. Punch 
a hole throusrh each dot. Be sure to let the children do all this 



28 Educative Seat Work. 

measuring themselves. Then let them string the warp threads 
through the holes, so that on the upper side of the loom, where 
the weaving is to be done, will appear just parallel lines of 
thread, half an inch apart, and on the wrong side just a row of 
big stitches, top and bottom. The woof threads may be any 
kind of light weight cloth that the community rag bags furnish, 
cut in strips about half an inch wide, and make into balls as 
for rag carpets. Muslin does very nicely, so does silkaline, 
denim is too heavy for good close weaving, soft goods will be 
better than those stiffly starched. The first rugs may be 
woven all of one kind of rags, or hit and miss. Next try 
rugs with a border pattern, necessitating two kinds of rag. 
Yarn may be used instead, if it is available. Pillowtops woven 
of rags are good. 

Mats may be made of plaited cornshucks, sewed together 
with strong cord or with raffia. Or the shucks may be wrapped 
and sewn with raffia or twine. Very pretty small mats may 
be made of rushes wrapped and sewn with raffia, or 
braided and sewn. Rushes and cornshucks may be used, 
too, for small baskets, long stems of honeysuckle vine may be 
used with raffia, just as the commercial reed is, in the making 
of mats and baskets. Some grasses are good to wrap and sew 
with light weight cord into small baskets, such as button 
baskets. Sometimes the materials may be dyed for border 
designs. There is much opportunity for interesting study in 
connection with dyeing, using the native roots, barks, and 
berries, as our grandmothers used to do. Elderberry, poke- 
berry, and walnut are suggested as likely to be of use for 
this purpose. 

A doll hammock is easily made, either by knotting or weav- 
ing. For weaving make a loom of cardboard, as follows : Use 
a rectangle of cardboard as long and as wide as you wish the 
body part of the hammock to be long. Notch the ends closely 
to string the warp threads. Fasten two small brass rings in 
the center of the frame, and string the warp from one ring, 
over the first notch in one end of the frame, down the other 
side to the corresponding notch at the other end of the frame 



Weave solidly on one side for the body of the hammock, 
leaving the cords on the other side to suspend it from the 



Educative Seat Work. 29 

rings. Then unfasten the rings from the frame so the ham- 
mock will come off, and hang up by the rings. Use carpet 
warp or yarn for stringing and weaving. 

Tam-o-shanter caps may be woven of zephyr yarn on cir- 
cular looms, and hoods on looms correctly shaped. Milton 
Bradley handles some of these "Schute weaving cards," as they 
are called. 

Weaving needles for the large pieces may be made by the 
boys. Whittle flat wooden needles about ten inches long, half 
an inch wide, and perhaps about an eighth of an inch thick. 
Cut a long eye in one end to carry the rag strips. Large 
bodkins, or smaller weaving needles made like the large ones, 
may be used for the smaller pieces. 

Soft worsted balls may be made as follows : Cut two pieces 
of cardboard into circles, each the diameter desired for the 
ball. From the center of each cut out a circle about one-third 
the diameter of the whole. Lay these two circles together, and 
wrap with zephyr, putting the end of the zephyr through the 
hole in the center, around both thicknesses of card, and back 
in the same hole, and so on, until the needle carrying the zephyr 
can no longer be forced through the hole, and the cardboard 
is hidden under a thick wrapping of yarn. Now with scissors 
cut around the circumference of the circle, so that the inside 
of the cardboards may be seen. With a stout thread run 
between the two pieces of cardboard, tie tightly around the 
waist of the many threads of zephyr that have been run 
through the hole, so as to fasten them all together in the exact 
middle. Tear off the cardboard, and the cut ends of the zephyr 
wrapping will stand out in a soft, round ball. 

17. Paper cutting, also, has been incidentally referred to, 
but needs and deserves elaboration. The simplest form of 
paper cutting, of course, is cutting to line, cutting out pictures 
by following their outlines. Anyone who has ever watched 
little children at work with scissors will realize that this is no 
small task for many of them, though many children will be 
found who handle the scissors easily. This cutting to line 
may profitably be used in cutting out different kinds of furni- 
ture for mounting on large sheets of paper, each representing 



30 Educative Seat Work. 

a room of the home, made as a class project, with the teacher's 
help, as the home study in the primary geography progresses. 
Or it may be used in cutting out animals for a barnyard, vege- 
tables for storehouse and cellar, and paper boys and girls and 
men and women to inhabit this paper world. Friezes for the 
blackboard are made of rabbits, turkeys, Santa Clauses, or 
other suitable subjects, traced from a pattern, cut out and 
pasted on a long strip of dark wall paper. 

Freehand cutting of objects is another type of work with 
scissors. The children delight to cut the chairs, beds, table 
of porridge bowls, three bears, and all the other objects in the 
story of Goldenlocks, which are then mounted on a large card 
to show the whole story. Many other objects are similarly 
represented. Occasionally such objects may be cut from pat- 
terns, though, for this purpose, the freehand work is more 
educational. 

Another and more difficult form of cutting is the repre- 
sentation of the whole scene in one piece, instead of cutting the 
parts and pasting them together. For example, in illustrating 
the home of Hiawatha, the one sheet of paper may be cut into 
a one-piece silhouette, showing the ground with tall pine trees 
and hemlocks, and in their midst the wigwam. Some children 
do this kind of cutting very well, and where a pupil shows 
ability along this line, he should be encouraged to make sil- 
houettes to illustrate his various booklets, or perhaps for the 
puppet shows referred to elsewhere. Other children will do 
better when the cuttings are made of each object separately 
and then assembled. 

All of these types of paper cutting are possible, with vary- 
ing degress of excellence, for even first grade pupils, and may 
be extended, with greater nicety of execution, into second and 
third grade work. Such cuttings should be used to decorate 
and illustrate booklets of various kinds, to make valentines 
and Easter cards, to keep weather records, etc. 

A very different form of paper cutting is the making of 
symmetrical designs with folded paper. Many lacey valentines 
may be made by folding the paper at the center four or eight 
times and cutting out oval, round, or oblong spaces. Such 
cuttings also make good "centerpieces" for the doll house 
table. Simpler symmetrical cuttings, such as leaves or flowers, 
made by folding once, are useful as patterns for stencils or 



Educative Seat Work. 31 

motifs to be mounted as a decoration across the top of a book- 
let cover, or perhaps as a decoration all around it. Many- 
variations of this will suggest themselves. For this purpose, 
cutting by a pattern is good. After the children design the unit, 
have them use it as a pattern, and cut all the replica exactly 
by it. 

The "bird-cage," dear to childish hearts a generation ago 
was made folding a square of paper on the diagonal, then again 
on the other diagonal, then bisecting the angle at the center, 
and once again, after which it was cut, first on one side and 
then on the other, as far across as possible without actually cut- 
ting the folded paper in two, and finally the outside edge cut so 
as to form a circle when the paper was unfolded. This outside 
edge might be held in the hand or pasted to a circular paper 
bottom, when, taking the center of the paper in the fingers, the 
weight of the cardboard or the pull of the other hand would 
stretch the paper out into truly "bird-cage" shape. These may 
be used as decorations for a Christmas tree, if made in papers 
of different colors. 

18. Paper folding is too elaborate to be more than men- 
tioned here, but an endless variety of boxes, soldier caps, 
chairs, cradles, sleds, and what not else may be made with 
the ma^ic "sixteenfold" and its modifications. Many designs 
for such work are found in "The Industrial Primary Reader," 
D. C. Heath; The Practical Drawing Book, Arts and Crafts 
Course, books I to III ; Prang's Progressive Lessons in Art 
Education, Industrial Arts Edition, books I and III; and other 
manuals listed at the enddf this bulletin. 

Much of the work in paper folding must first be done 
under the teacher's supervision. This is suitable work for 
either manual training or number periods, the latter because 
so much arithmetic may be objectively taught in connection 
with the folding, such as forms — squares, triangles, oblongs; 
terms — horizontal, vertical, perpendicular, angle, right angle; 
fractions — halves, fourths, eighths, sixteenths, and such facts 
as that two fourths make one half, four sixteenths make one 
fourth, etc. ; multiplication — four rows of four squares each 
make sixteen squares ; and many other facts. 

After a lesson has been given in which the teacher's direc- 
tions have been followed under her supervision, it is well to 
have the children try to make at their seats the same objects. 



32 Educative Seat Work. 

with the privilege of studying, for assistance, the model made 
under direction. A good motive for such repeated work is to 
make a better one than was produced at the first effort. Many 
of the folded forms will be needed in quantity; for example, 
chairs for the doll house, boxes for the Christmas tree, and in 
such case no further motive is needed for making over the 
same form. Another way to make the repetition attractive is 
to have the first model made in plain paper, and to use for that 
made in the seat work time pretty colored paper of some kind. 
After the children have had enough experience in handling 
the paper to begin to originate, they should be encouraged to 
do so. It may be that some of the children will find it easy to 
do this folding unassisted, and it will certainly be true that 
some of them will not. In such case, the more capable should 
be led to help the weaker, with due emphasis on the fact that 
what is desired of them is to show the others how to make the 
desired form, rathery than merely to make it for them. Chil- 
dren in the same grade may help each other, or the help may 
be given by a higher to a lower grade. 

19. "Tearing" is sometimes used for paper-cutting, 
especially where scissors are not to be had. A very pretty 
frierlze for the Christmas blackboard may be made by tearing 
Christmas trees out of a green paper, in fairly uniform size, 
and mounting at regular intervals on a manila paper back- 
ground. 

20. Charts of various kinds are found useful in many 
schools. A corn chart is made when corn is being studied. It 
will show a section of the ear, a small bunch of shucks, and 
various products of corn — meal, hominy, "grits," corn syrup 
in a small vial, corn starch, a corncob doll, miniature corn- 
shuck mats, a basket of braided corn shucks, etc. Similar 
charts may be made for pine, wheat, cotton, or other familiar 
agricultural products. 

21. "Woodblock printing," as a means of decoration, has 
recently become a noteworthy craft. For the little folks a very 
simple form of it is possible. Printer's ink is, of course, a 
good medium to use if it can be secured in desirable colors; 
oil paints are excellent, but expensive; but more or less satis- 
factory work can be done with common ink, water colors, or 



Educative Seat Work. 33 

other coloring fluid. Make a pad of some soft absorbent cloth, 
like cheese cloth, using several thicknesses on a flat surface 
such as a piece of glass, a slate, or a flat plate. Moisten the 
pad thoroughly with the coloring fluid, but do not have the 
liquid standing in puddles on top of the cloth. The end of a 
match may be used to make a circular stamp. Press down the 
end on the pad and then press it on the surface to be decorated, 
and repeat to form the border or other design. Other sticks 
may be whittled with square or triangular ends, or in other 
simple shapes, and used in combination with the match end. 
For example, a border might consist of a repetition of two cir- 
cles alternated with a triangle, or with a square. Other 
combinations may easily be worked out. 

For those who feel that the cost of watercolors for indi- 
vidual supply is prohibitive, it is suggested that the contents 
of a tube, or one of the cakes of color which are often used, 
be dissolved in enough water to make a good tone of the color, 
and the solution kept in a bottle and used as desired. In many 
cases, it may be found quite possible that each child will be 
provided with a box of colors. There is considerable oppor- 
tunity for experiment with substitutes for water colors, such, 
for example, as some of the dyes now on the market. 

22. Clay modeling is excellent work for those who have 
the clay. Clay flour may be bought and moistened as neces- 
sary. One handbook states that five pounds of clay flour is 
enough to furnish individual material to twelve children for 
a year. In some communities there will be found native clay 
which is workable. The following directions for a substitute 
for clay are quoted from instructions issued by the Manual 
Training Department of the Elementary Schools of Chicago. 
"Paper pulp is a substance which any one can easily make 
and use in place of clay for modeling. The material costs 
nothing and is so clean and pleasant to work with, it is sur- 
prising paper pulp has not been more generally applied to 
constructive work. To make pulp of paper mache. tear any 
waste paper (newspaper or writing paper will do) into pieces 
not more than one inch square. Fill a bucket with these bits 
of paper and pour over it about a gallon of hot water (boil- 
ing). Let the paper soak for five or six hours and then drain 
ofif the excess water. If now the mass of wet paper is worked 
vigorously with a stick, churning it and thus tearing the bits 



34 Educative Seat Work. 

of paper very fine, you will have, at the end of a few minutes, 
an excellent quality of paper pulp. The pupils will enjoy the 
making as well as the using of this material." 

Whatever the substance you use for modeling, the children 
may make of it all kinds of objects — animals for the farmyard 
(use sticks or fine wire as a basis to strengthen slender parts), 
fruits and vegetables for the barn, Easter rabbits, bowls and 
vases, tiny cubes and spheres which may be colored and strung 
for beads, candlesticks, and so on. 



Educative Seat Work. 35 

SUGGESTIONS FOR USING THE VARIOUS 
TYPES OF SEAT WORK 



Desirability of Relation Between the Seat Work and 
Special Interests. 

The suggestions for seat work will doubtless suggest others 
to the resourseful teacher. It should be stated that much 
depends upon the way in which such exercises as these are 
used. If they are employed miscellaneously, or in the order in 
which they happen to be arranged in this bulletin, they are like- 
ly to result in work that is too mechanical. There should be a 
distinct effort on the part of the teacher to relate the school 
work to some real thing in which the children are interested, 
and the seat work, being so important a part of the school 
work, should certainly express or gratify such an interest. 
When children spend so large a part of their time at their 
seats, we must get educational value out of the seat work, 
as well as out of the recitation; we must not consider it as 
something to kill time, but as a means of educating the chil- 
dren's* hands, eyes, discrimination, judgment, skill, taste, of 
developing their initiative and of increasing their experience, 
as well as of giving valuable lessons in form, number, lan- 
guage, etc. 

For examples, toy rakes and spades should be made in 
connection with some effort to share in or express the garden 
interest. The doll house should be furnished as a part of the 
study of the home. Paper chains are particularly appropriate to 
Christmas time, when the decoration of the tree is the central 
interest. Sometimes each child may be allowed to decorate a 
miniature tree of his own, to take home, perhaps to his mother, 
perhaps to the baby of the family. Such individual trees, 
which, of course will be tiny, may be set in tin cans or small 
boxes, covered with paper, which may or may not be decorated 
with a simple stenciled border, and decorated with chains, 
stars, lanterns, etc., of the child's own making, and hung with 
the gifts he makes for his home people. Other chains may be 
made in the fall, when there are dogwood and other berries to 
add to their beauty, and worn home in triumphant pride. The 



36 Educative Seat Work. 

ruler should be made in connection with some real need for 
measuring, in which the use of cardboard squares has proved 
too laborious or impracticable, as, for instance, in measuring 
the growth of a twig in one year, which is sometimes done in 
studying the dififerent trees to see which grows the fastest, a 
topic that might well be considered when the improvement of 
the schoolground, and the selection of trees for planting, is 
being considered. Just when or how each kind of work is to 
be used must be decided by the individual teacher with refer- 
ence to her pupils' needs. 

Interests Likely to be Conspicuous in Each Month, 
With Suggestions. 

It may, however, be helpful to recapitulate here the various 
interests that are likely to be dominant at dififerent times of 
the year, and to select some relation of seat work thereto. 

October interests : The county fair, the State fair, the corn 
harvest, fall planting, Columbus day (October 12), the color- 
ing leaves, caterpillars seeking a safe place for the winter, 
bird migration, Hallowe'en, general home activities. 

October suggestions : A corn chart ; cornshuck mats and 
baskets; paper cutting of growing corn and the story of Hia- 
watha and Mondamin ; the farm yard shown on the sand table 
— barn, pigpen, hen house, yards and fences ; the cornfield also 
shown on the sand table ; chains of red and yellow corn ; leaf 
collections and leaf booklets; cuttings of birds, caterpillars, 
and cocoons, as observed; coloring of outline pictures of birds; 
a fall booklet, recording weather and nature changes, and 
including a calendar; a silk chart, if the caterpillars spin in 
the school room; preparation of exhibits for the fair; making 
jack-o-lanterns of pumpkins or squash; cutting brownies of 
paper; illustrating the story of how the Indians were fright- 
ened by a jack-o-lantern ; making a Columbus poster; group- 
ing leaves according to prevailing color, and copying in order ; 
illustrating one or two pretty fall memory gems. 

November interests : Trees' winter preparation ; hard 
frosts, fall plowing and planting; Thanksgiving; tobacco sea- 
son ; human preparation for winter. 

November suggestions : A wheat chart ; cuttings to illus- 
trate ''The Little Red Hen;" illustration of same in Grades II 



Educative Seat Work. Z7 

or III ; collection, drawing, and measurement of year's growth 
of twigs of different trees; wool chart; doll house begun; Pil- 
grim settlement shown on the sand table, and perhaps some 
Indian home life; farming implements cut or constructed; 
chains of berries; booklets and calendar, as in preceding 
month; Thanksgiving postcards. 

December interests: Hog killing; Christmas; winter 
birds; shortest day in the year; probably the first snowfall. 

December suggestions : Weather record and calendar, 
made into a Christmas booklet; Christmas gifts; frieze for the 
blackboard ; cutting snow crystals ; decorations for the Christ- 
mas tree — pop corn chains, paper chains, stars, lanterns, candy 
boxes, cornucopias made of woven paper, etc. ; candles for the 
Christmas tree; feeding the birds; dressing a Chirstmas tree 
for the birds; further work on the doll house, if time permit; 
Christmas cards, postcards, and calendars. 

January interests: New Year; getting ice; real snowfall; 
skating and coasting ; Lee and Jackson's birthdays. 

January suggestions : Decorated calendars ; New Year 
postcards ; sleds of paper or other materials for the doll house 
or sand table; cuttings of skating and coasting scenes; Eskimo 
life on the sand table or shown in posters; making Confederate 
flags, either by drawing and coloring, cutting and pasting, or, 
as the real flags were made, cutting and sewing cloth; rugs 
and quilts for the doll house; "thank you" letters for Christ- 
mas gifts. 

February interests : Shortest month in the year ; "Ground- 
hog day;" St. Valentine's Day; Washington and Lincoln's 
birthdays; Longfellow's birthday; return of the robins, swell- 
ing buds ; marbles. 

February suggestions : Calendar and weather record kept 
"to see if the groundhog story is so;" valentines; valentine 
postals; United States flags, both in the original form and 
as we have it now ; further Indian study and related sand-table 
work ; beginning of spring bird records ; drawing and coloring 
of bird pictures and buds ; buds in water, drawn from week to 
week to show development; paper cuttings to illustrate the 
stories of Washington ; marble bags. 

March interests : Wind, kites, early flowers, equinox; pre- 
parations for Easter; fruit blossoms; piping of frogs and 
toads ; emerging of butterflies or moths from cocoons and 



38 Educative Seat Work. 

chrysalids kept over winter; late frosts; seed sowing in the 
house or cold frame. 

March suggestions : Copy and illustrate simple wind 
poems ; make simple kites ; decorate Easter eggs ; Easter post- 
cards; calendar and weather record, showing especially length 
of days and nights, sudden temperature changes, and force 
and direction of the wind; begin flower collection; cut and 
draw early spring flowers ; make and care for eggshell gardens ; 
begin work in the school garden; record date of fruit blos- 
soms,, and keep to add date of their leafing later,- make a frog 
poster from frog cuttings made by the whole class; record in 
some way the butterfly and moth developments — drawings, 
paintings, cuttings, simple language work, etc. ; spring clothes 
for the dolls; a frieze of tulips or some equally easily cut 
spring flower for the blackboard ; booklets of work for exhibi- 
tion at the close of school, for those schools which will close 
late in March or early in April. 

April interests : April showers ; spring planting, etc. ; 
abundance and variety of flowers ; nesting of birds ; preparation 
for Mayday; spring house cleaning; newly hatched chickens; 
and perhaps Easter and the closing of school. (Listed also in 
March, for some years or some schools.) 

April suggestions : Weather record kept to show April's 
proneness to showers ; drawings and cuttings illustrating April 
weather and other seasonal conditions ; flower booklet con- 
tinued ; making of bird boxes ; spring cleaning in the doll house, 
with whatever manufacture of new furniture, etc., may be 
necessary ; May baskets ; the poultry yard constructed on the 
sand table ; booklets of work for exhibition on the closing day 
of school. (See March for Easter suggestions.) 

Grading of Seat Work. 

Most of the work that has been suggested is possible even 
for the first grade, though it is to be expected that more 
difficult pieces of each kind of work can be done by the 
second and third grades. In a few cases, it is not advised that 
the work be attempted in the first or even in the second 
grade. For the benefit of the teachers who are uncertain as 
to where the suggested exercises are possible, the following- 
list of work that may fairly be undertaken in each grade is 
appended : 



Educative Seat Work. 39 

Grade I : Reading, numbers 1 to 13, and some of 16 and 19, 
Number, numbers 1 to 15, 17 to 20, 22 to 27. 
Construction, etc., numbers 1 to 7, 9, 10, 13, and some 
each of 8, 11, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 22. Sugges- 
tions for grading much of this has already been 
given in Part II. 
Grade II : Anything possible for Grade I, and in addition, 
numbers 16 and 19 under Reading, 16 and 21 under 
Number, and 21 and some of 15 under Construction. 
Grade III : Anything mentioned for Grades I and II, that is 
sufficiently advanced to be interesting, and in addition 
numbers 14, 15, 17, 18 under Reading, and 14, 15, and 
20 under Construction. 



40 Educative Seat Work. 



PROVISIONS FOR FREE PLAY 



Out of Door Provisions. 

One more subject needs to be fairly dealt with, and that 
is the provision that the teacher may make for the periods 
which are specifically left for free play. Of course, in the 
nature of the thing, she will not actively direct such periods, 
but she should see that suggestive material is within the pupils' 
reach at the time. The children are to be sent out of 
doors for as much of this play time as the weather will 
permit. On clear days in the fall, they should spend all of it 
out of doors, unless the playground is absolutely unshaded and 
the heat is likely to be injurious, and this is hardly probable, 
since the school house itself is sure to afford some shade. 
There should certainly be a sand pile on the playground for the 
use of the little children, and, since there are likely to be more 
cold days than warm ones during the session, it should be in 
a warm, sunny spot, and one where water will not be likely 
to collect after a rain. It is desirable that this sand be confined 
in a sort of bin, to prevent washing away, and to secure a 
more level surface than is possible in a pile. If you have any 
strong trees with conveniently placed limbs, put up one or 
more swings, of stout rope, with the seat securely fastened in, 
and neither too high from the ground nor of too long possible 
swing. Arrange a seesaw, or, if you are afraid of that, make 
a bouncing board — a stout but yielding plank, fastened at 
each end to a stump or post about as high as an ordinary chair. 
Have the big boys make a hurdle for jumping, of two stout 
saplings, their lower ends deeply buried in the ground, and 
their upper ends about five feet above ground. The side 
branches of these saplings should be cut nearly, but not quite 
down to the main stem, leaving a short projecting twig stump 
at equal heights on each, across which a switch, or a light rope, 
may be loosely laid to be jumped over. There should be 
several of these projecting stumps, so as to make it possible 
to make high or low jumps. Keep a large, soft ball in some 
convenient place near the door, which the children may be 
privileged to take with them when they go out to play, and 



Educative Seat Work. 41 

expected to return to its place when they are through. Or, 
lacking this, have them make bean bags. They should be 
allowed to make one each that they may dispose of as they 
please, but in addition, it will be well to have them make a 
supply, of some distinctive material, to be kept in the same 
place as the rubber ball, and used in the same way. Other 
games may be provided if it is possible, such as croquet and 
ring-toss, and the children themselves will introduce marbles, 
tops, and jump ropes at their proper season. 

Of course it is not necessary that all this playground equip- 
ment should be on hand from the first. It will probably be 
better to introduce it gradually, giving the children oppor- 
tunity to find the possibilities of one thing before presenting 
another. The teacher will need to help the children get into 
the use of some unfamiliar equipment, but she should avoid 
attempting to force any of it upon them. Other outdoor 
amusements, too, she may need to introduce to them — the 
making of a playhouse in some sheltered cosy corner, laying off 
play farms, with gardens and orchards, and caring for them, 
games such as blind man's buff, drop the handkerchief, the 
mulberry bush, puss in the corner, hide the switch, hide and 
seek, prisoner's base, and various singing games. Perhaps the 
children will play these so noisily as to hamper the work of 
those who are indoors; if so they will need to be told of it, 
and to make an effort to control the noise. Only if they seem 
to find it impossible to do so should such games be prohibited, 
and even then it will be well to admit them to probation 
periods, after a sufficient long deprivation to impress the point, 
that they may make a further offort to gain the self-control 
they need. This very act of checking their own natural incli- 
nation to loud demonstrations is very educative and valuable, 
and the children should not be deprived of the benefit of it. 

Though most of the days of the session will be such that the 
children can play out-of-doors, there will be some in which 
cold or wet will make it necessary that they stay in the house. 
For such days house games should be provided, and the chil- 
dren taught the necessity of playing quietly, for the sake of the 
others. If you can screen off a corner of the schoolroom where 
they may play out of sight of the children who might thereby 
be distracted from their work, so much the better. Of course, 
unless they can play quietly behind the screen, they will have 



42 Educative Seat Work. 

to be deprived of the privilege, just as may be necessary in the 
case of outdoor games ; but, again, they should be given further 
opportunity to demonstrate growth in control. 

Indoor Games and Play Equipment. 

Some of the indoors amusements that may be used are 
specified here. Cut up pictures are good. At first use very 
simple ones, cut into strips of equal size and shape. The larger 
children may make such games themselves. Large pictures, 
such as are found on the covers of Saturday Evening Posts, 
The Woman's Home Companion, etc., may be pasted flat on 
cardboard ruled and cut into strips or squares. After the little 
folks have some skill in putting these simple pictures together, 
more difficult cuts may be used. Keep all the pieces of one 
picture in an envelope, with the name of the picture on the 
back. 

Building blocks are both educative and amusing. Domi- 
noes afford valuable training. The little children may be 
taught the simplest form of the game, which consists in get- 
ting rid of those one holds by matching ends. This gives much 
exercise in visualizing numbers. A checker board and men will 
provide material for a game that the smallest child can play, 
and in which the oldest man can find new possibilities. Scis- 
sors should be available, and catalogs and fashion magazines, 
for any children that enjoy cutting out and dressing paper 
dolls. By asking for magazines from the various homes, it 
will be quite possible to allow the children to keep at least a 
considerable part of those dolls which they wish to cut out. 
Pencils and paper should be at hand for such games as tit-tat- 
toe, or the game of joining dots into squares. There should be 
the collection of materials for individual invention and con- 
struction, for the benefit of children who have ideas for the 
sand table or doll house that they wish to work out. Doll- 
dressing, scrapbook making, drawing, painting, etc., may be 
considered legitimate occupation for these times. It will be 
well to keep certain materials sacred to just such times as these, 
so that when it is necessary for the children to stay in the 
house, the occupation that is available may have the charm of 
novelty. Picture books and simple story books should be 
here, too, and these also should be used at no other time. 



Educative Seat Work. 43 



Possible Objections Considered. 

There may seem to be two objections to such plans as these 
— lack of material, and danger of disputes. The lack of mate- 
rial must be supplied by the efforts of all the children; the 
contribution of pictures, pretty cloth for sewing, bright papers 
for weaving or folding, magazines to cut up, etc., may be 
offered by any of the pupils as their share in the general good. 
If there is no library, any children who have picture or story 
books may contribute them to a general loan library, but there 
should be an understanding with the child's parents that there 
is likely to be considerable legitimate wear and tear on any 
book so lent. Enough games may be bought for a quarter ; the 
children may furnish their own pencils and paper, if necessary. 
Scissors may be brought from home, but it is more satisfactory 
to have a school supply, and if they are not a part of the room's 
equipment, they should be bought with part of the proceeds 
of the first money-making enterprise the school engages in. 
Don't, however, fail to get together some of these materials, 
even if some of the others must wait until a more favorable 
time for their purchase. 

There is no doubt there will be danger of dispute among 
the cMldren who are playing together. Often two of them will 
want the same game, the same materials, the same paper doll. 
From the very beginning there will have to be an understand- 
ing that whenever such a disagreement occurs, the object of 
dispute must be laid aside and used by neither until there shall 
be an opportunity to refer the matter to the teacher or some 
other referee who may be decided upon. And on no consid- 
eration must the reciting classes be interrupted on account of 
any dispute. Undoubtedly there will be difficulties of one kind 
or another connected with free play in the house, but in the 
overcoming of these difficulties is development for the pupils, 
and they should not be deprived of this development because 
of the difficulties. 

Nor should the prinifctry grades be deprived of these oppor- 
tunities because of the danger of distracting the attention of 
the older pupils from their work. This reason is often urged 
against all attractive primary work in multi-graded schools. 
As a matter of fact, after the novelty wears off, the older 
children will pay no more attention to the primary occupations 
than they do to their small sisters and brothers' play at home. 



44 Educative Seat Work. 



THE FIRST GRADE'S FIRST WEEK 



The First Grade's First Week. 

What shall our first grade do the first week? When shall 
they work and when shall they play? Suppose we plan a 
tentative week's work for them, elaborating here and passing 
over lightly there, as circumstances seem to warrant. These 
little folks will be strangers, and most of them shy strangers. 
There will have to be many conversation lessons about matters 
dear to their childish hearts, many beloved stories told, many 
simple songs sung. With one class more, with another less, 
can be done. But we will do all we can. 

Nature and Cause of First Grade Difficulties. 



them started, finding something they can do, and setting them 
at it. When the seven-year-old boy or girl enters school for 
the first time, he comes into a new world. The newness does 
not lie in the fact of If^arning, for he has been learning all his 
life, and has probably acquired already more knowledge than 
he will in all the years of his school life. But now he will 
learn differently. He has been concerned with things — what 
they are, how they serve him, what he can do with them. He 
has learned one set of symbols, those wonderful things called 
spoken words, whereby we express and understand thought. 
But he learned them painlessly and probably with joy, as who 
can doubt who has watched a two-year-old touch object after 
object, ask "What's dis?," and, given its name, repeat it 
eagerly. In school, for the first time, he meets another set of 
symbols — letters, written words, figures, marks of written 
or printed language or of arithmetic, and, too often, he learns 
them, not, as in his baby days, because he wants them, or con- 
sciously needs them, or is curious about them, but because it is 
decided for him that he must know them when he grows 
up, and that he has already waited long enough to begin. So 
he wanders through the maze, with, too often, no growth of 
thought or real mental development, but only an acquisition, 
Chinese fashion, of the perception of queer-shaped black marks 



Educative Seat Work. 45 

which perhaps mean something, but whose meaning or interest 
he has no guidance in discovering. 

But this should not be so. He must learn written symbols, 
and printed symbols, just as years ago he learned oral symbols, 
his stock of which he must also continue to increase; but at 
the same time he should be growing, body and mind, and 
learning more about things of Nature's own method, seeing, 
handling, doing. 

Difficulties and Dangers in Providing Formal Work. 

Probably the hardest part of the teacher's task is the 
introduction of these little people into this new world — the 
beginnings of reading, number, writing, and language. It is 
hard, too, to direct their occupation, to find something they 
can do alone, to give the necessary instructions for beginning, 
to find time to see if it has been well done, and to approve or 
disapprove. And this last is very important. The novelty 
of the thingiv^ a time keep children doing work which is of 
no permanent value, which is destined to be swept into confu- 
sion, without even a glance from the teacher, when the next 
class is called; rows of figures written just to be erased with 
a small soiled fore finger and rewritten ; peg boards to be filled 
with pegs, and emptied ruthlessly when the "busy work" 
period is over; drawings to be crumpled hastily into trash 
basket without ever being seen. But when the novelty wears 
oflf, what is left? The teacher must see and judge of the 
results of the occupation; it is just as important as the recita- 
tion, perhaps more so, because it is the child's unaided pro- 
duction, and it should just as surely pass under the teacher's 
inspection, both for the encouragement of the pupils and for 
her own guidance in planning future work. 

Suggestions for the First Day. 

It is their first morning in school. If possible, the children 
in the grades above the second should have begun the day 
before, thus giving the teacher leisure to get them well graded, 
their work assigned, and perhaps a temporary program shown 
and explained to them. Opening exercises are over, the older 
pupils are at work, the second grade has been assigned a seat 
reading lesson, and the teacher turns to the beginners. What 



46 Educative Seat Work. 

shall she do with them? What do they like? Songs, games, 
stories. Suppose she talks with them about their games. Do 
they like to play ? And what? What toys have they? What 
do they do with them? What games do they play out-of- 
doors ? They will be slow, perhaps, of expression, but some 
will talk. When the fifteen* minutes she can give them is 
nearly over, she gives to each a sheet of paper, not less than 
six inches by nine, and a piece of charcoal, and suggests that 
they make a picture to show the games they like best to play. 
After fifteen minutes with the second grade she returns to 
them again. Is there any charcoal on their hands ? Will John 
pass the box and let the others drop their sticks in? Then 
they will get rid of the dust on their hands in a hurry, so — 
and she shows them how to brush one hand against the other 
till they are cleaned. Now let us see those pictures. Take 
them between your two hands, one on each side, so, and hold 
them up for me to guess what you like best to play. And 
this boy or this girl may stand in front of the class and show 
his for the others to guess. 

Then the talk may be turned to the idea of counting. How 
many made pictures of a certain game? Count them, John. 
Or, how many children does it take to play that game ? Have 
we enough in the class to play it? Or, do you ever play games 
you count in? (hide and seek, etc.) How far can you count? 
Let us put our pictures away and see how far we can count. 
How many children in this class? In school? How many 
boys? Girls? etc. Can you count these sticks? How many 
have you ? Count them for us. John doesn't know how many 
he has. Who will count them for him ? Lay one stick on your 
desks. Lay another by it. How many sticks ? What can you 
make of them on your desks? (A tent, a table, a cross, etc.) 
Lay another stick on your desk. How many sticks now? 
What can you make with them? Compare the work of dif- 
ferent members of the class, giving each opportunity to tell 
what his sticks have made. If time and the ability of the 
children permit, add another, to bring the number up to four, 
and another, to make five, etc, each time leading them to com- 
bine the number under consideration at the time into various 
shapes suggestive of familiar objects. It is impossible to say 



^See First Grade Schedule in Appendix. 



Educative Seat Work. 47 

just how far this lesson may be carried, for some children 
come to school with so much wider and clearer number knowl- 
edge than others. This first day you may be very well satis- 
fied if you get an idea of about how far your pupils' ability to 
count or to recognize groups goes. 

When the time is up, collect the sticks, and dismiss the 
children out-of-doors for free play, till needed, which they will 
be again in twenty minutes. Later on, when the children have 
a little more power to work alone from a direction given at 
the beginning of the period, this twenty minutes will be 
employed in seat work. But just now they are too helpless to 
profit by such work, and if set at it are likely to begin to form 
the habit of idle listlessness. We want to be very careful in 
these first days of school that we give them no unreasonable 
tasks, and that we see that they perform those that are given. 

When they come in, assemble them with the second grade 
and begin the language work of the year with telling of some 
story that you have learned to tell well and that is sure to 
please children. Perhaps you may find by talking with them 
which are their favorites. 

The period which has been assigned to Phonics and 
Writing should for a few days, be used for various exercises 
directed to general ear training, or preparing for the more 
formallessons to follow. There are several systems of phonics 
now in vogue, and the method of beginning the work will vary 
with the system chosen. A careful study of the manual will 
show how the first work should be conducted. It will probably 
not begin with the sound of any letter. These little people 
must be taught to hear, and perhaps to speak. Their utterance 
may be blurred and indistinct; if it is, they probably tend to 
hear in the same way. A favorite device for beginning the 
work in phonics is one which may well be used here. The 
teacher pronounces the name of each child in the room or 
class, separating the initial sound from the rest of the word. 
Thus, she says, "This boy is J-ohn;" That girl is M-ary," 
etc., and the children are called on to say what the name is. 
This may be extended in further lessons, by having the chil- 
dren pronounce their own names so, by having names of 
objects in the room so pronounced, as, "I am thinking of the 
d-esk," "Put the book on the t-able," etc. Perhaps as good 
occupation as the class can be given for the ten minutes immed- 



48 Educative Seat Work. 

lately following is listening to the second grade, who will 
be doing the same work, if there has never been any phonics 
work in the school before; or advanced work of the same kind, 
if phonics was taught in the preceding year. If it should 
happen that there had been no phonics in the school, the first 
few lessons might be given to all the primary grades together, 
but it would not be advisable to continue this long, for the 
children who have been reading for a year or more have 
something, however indefinite, that enables them to progress 
faster than the beginners. 

It will be well, on this first day, to have a drawing lesson, 
rather than a geography lesson, for the children are going to 
do so much drawing for seat work that it is well to have them 
do it as well as they can from the very beginning. The tend- 
ency of children is to draw too small and cramped pictures. 
I once gave a first grade class a sheet of paper about six inches 
by nine, on which to draw the picture of Jack and Jill falling 
down the hill, and the child who afterward became the class 
artist put the whole picture down in the left lower corner of 
the paper in a space that was not a bit more than two inches 
square. This first lesson in drawing should be a criticism 
lesson, with pictures that the children have drawn for seat 
work during the morning as a basis for the criticism. Have a 
few children, preferably selected from all the grades, bring 
their drawings to the front of the room for the class to see, 
and let the first point discussed be what they show or tell us. 
A picture is always worthy of some commendation if it tells 
something. Be careful to select for this exhibition those that 
do tell something, so that there may be something in every 
one of them to commend. Then lead the children to see and 
to tell what some are better than others because it is easier 
to see what they are trying to tell because you can see them 
better ; they are larger. Talk about the size of the paper : 
"What use is all that part that has no picture on it? It would 
have been better to use some of it and make the picture large 
enough for us all to see, wouldn't it?" But you will want to 
guard against the other extreme, perhaps by showing a picture 
that is too large for the paper, and is hence crowded. A well 
proportioned picture should be surrounded by a margin of 
unused paper somewhat as a framed picture is set inside of a 
margin of mat. Of course the children's taste is not yet suffi- 



Educative Seat Work. 49 

ciently well formed to know what is good proportion ; about all 
the teacher can do is to constantly commend the better efforts, 
and emphasize the facts that we don't want the picture to be 
lost on the page, and neither do we want it to be so crowded 
that it looks as if it were bursting out its clothes. In later 
criticism lessons the teacher will bring out the proper placing 
of objects in the drawing, but the size is enough to consider 
in this first lesson. If you have some good and well mounted 
pictures of interesting subjects to show at the close of the 
period, and then to set up temporarily on the blackboard ledge 
or in some other convenient place, so much the better. 

This done, the first and second grade children may be sent 
out of doors to find objects for their "number boxes." Let 
us assume that in the number lesson this morning the teacher 
has found that they can all count and recognize numbers to 
five. (The number might as well be four, six, or another.) 
Give them boxes in which to put their collections, and tell 
them to find five of as many things as they can, as five leaves, 
five pebbles, etc. Have the second grade help the first grade 
find as many different things as possible. 

Twenty minutes after when they are called back, they 
should put their boxes in their desks for future use, and turn 
their %attention to the learning of a song which should bear 
some relation to the thoughts and interests the children brought 
with them to school or those the teacher has suggested during 
the day. After this song, let the first and second grades take 
their lunches out-of-doors and begin their noon recess. Require 
that they do not return during the fifteen minutes before the 
whole class is dismissed. 

The Nature Study lesson after dinner, with the three 
grades together, will be conversational in character, designed 
to lead the children to talk freely of the nature objects that 
they see on their way to school, with the further aim of caus- 
ing them to see more each day than they have been accustomed 
to, and perhaps with the special aim of directing particular 
attention to that phase of nature which has been selected for 
the core of the lessons of the week, month, or season. In 
this period, if it has not already been done during the morning, 
a beginning may be made of gently curbing the children's 
desire to talk all at once. The restriction should be based on 
the fact that we want to hear all that each one has to say, 



50 Educative Seat Work. 

and the raising of hands may be suggested as a means of 
making this possible. If one of the children, rather than the 
teacher, can be led to make the suggestion, so much the better. 

In the first grade reading period which follows, the little 
people will be introduced to their first written language. The 
lesson will be on the board, and will be based on the early 
morning talk about play or on some other interest that has 
shown itself conspicuously during the day. The teacher will 
try, in this period, to teach one or two words, which, after 
the period is over will be left on the board for future review. 
When the lesson is over she may give each child a large copy 
of this word, written on stiff paper, and a handful of bright- 
colored grains of corn, or, if she has them, pegs, with the 
direction to cover the lines of the word with the grains, so as 
to make it in the bright color instead of the black lines she 
used, and with permission to go out-of-doors to play when it 
has been done, leaving the work on the desks for the teacher's 
inspection when she shall be at leasure. The object of this, 
of course, is to fix the image of the word form in the chil- 
dren's minds. 

The last period before recess today, and probably for 
several days, will be given to getting the schoolyard in order. 
Trash, leaves, and brush must be cleaned up, even if the 
ground has been cleared of underbrush, which is by no means 
certain. Plans must be made for laying off the ground ; where 
shall the playgrounds be ? the baseball field ? the space for ring 
games or similar games the little children will play? the 
basket-ball court or the croquet ground ? Where are we going 
to have our garden? What ought to be right in front of 
the school, to be seen by all who pass by on the road? How 
much space have we to spare for a lawn? Where shall we 
have flower beds? etc. There are many question that the 
children, even the youngest, should share in answering, that 
they may come to feel the joy of proprietorship in this, our 
school. And they should be allowed, also, to help to put things 
in the condition we want. So we will find work enough for all 
of us out-of-doors to prevent our doing much indoor manual 
training during this period, for some time. There is quite as 
much field for manual training out-of-doors as indoors. 

After the recess which immediately follows this period, 
the first and second grade children should be required to 



Educative Seat Work. 51 

remain out-of-doors. If they choose, they may continue the 
clearing up of the ground, but it is dangerous to set this as 
a task, for it will be impossible to oversee it, and bad habits 
of work are likely to result. Any of them who live near 
enough to the school to go home should get their hats or 
whatever else they need to take with them, and be ready to 
leave before the end of the recess, so that they will not need 
to interrupt the classes remaining by making their prepara- 
tions for departure after the lessons of this last quarter of 
the day have been begun. 

It will hardly be necessary to give in such detail sug- 
gestions for the work of the remainder of the week; the 
following outline shows what may reasonably be undertaken. 

Suggestions for the Second Day. 

Let the reading lessons, all on the blackboard today and 
for many days to come, continue and extend the work begun 
the first day. The teacher should look over the first few pages 
of the reader to be used, and list the words which are employed 
there. This stock of words she should use again and again 
in lessons which are as far as possible based upon or related 
to the children's own interests and activities. 

A few moments must be taken, at the conclusion of the 
morning reading lesson, to give out materials and to give 
directions for the seat work to follow, which will be in 
number. If the children on the first day were successful in 
finding a variety of objects to put in their number boxes, let 
them get them out, and sort them all out on the desk, grouping 
all like objects together. When the teacher takes charge of 
them, in fifteen minutes, for the recitation in number, the collec- 
tion made by various pupils will be examined and compared, 
and they will be asked to count each other's groups, to be sure 
that there are five each. Other simple problems may be given, 
such as the combination of the five leaves of one with one 
or two from another's collection, and the resultant number; 
or the children may tell little stories about their collections — 
"I have three maple leaves and two oak leaves, and I have 
five leaves in all." If the objects are such as to admit of 
symmetrical or pretty arrangement, or if they may be com- 
bined to represent some familiar object, this also may be done. 
In case the children did not succeed on the first day in getting 



52 Educative Seat Work. 

a good variety of objects they may use for this seat work 
and recitation period the boxes of miscellaneous articles which 
the teacher has already been advised to provide. (See under 
Number Seat Work, exercise I.) 

Dismiss for free play after this lesson, for lack of profit- 
able seat work, until time for the language period, which may, 
if desired, be used for poem or conversation instead of story. 

The phonics period, and its succeeding seat work period 
will be given today to similar exercises to those of the first 
day. 

Have a geography, instead of drawing lesson, today, and 
use the time in talking about the children's homes. In the 
seat work period that follows give the children scissors and 
old magazines or catalogs, and let them cut out objects that 
are found in their homes. These will be used in future periods 
to paste on paper to represent rooms, so they should be care- 
fully collected and put away. A simple device to keep them 
together is to have provided for each pupil a sheet of note paper 
or any paper folded double once, as note paper is, and with the 
child's name on the back. These may be distributed, the 
children asked to put their cuttings inside for safe keeping, 
and then they may be collected and put in a big envelope or 
other safe receptacle till needed again. This device will 
probably be of only temporary value, since soon the children 
will be taught, in a manual training lesson, to make envelopes 
or portfolios in which to keep their work. 

The music today, and for the rest of the week, will be 
along the same line as on the first day, as will the nature study. 

After the reading lesson in the afternoon, make the first 
use of word cards as suggested in the list of exercises classified 
under reading, etc., Number I. Dismiss for free play, as on 
yesterday, in the period before dinner and the one before 
gardening in the afternoon. 

Suggestions for the Third Day. 

The work of the third day, except where specified here, 
will be a continuation and extension of the first and second 
days. In the 9 :25 seat work period, give them splints to 
arrange in groups of five or six (depending upon their power 
to count and to recognize groups, as shown in previous Num- 
ber lessons), so as to make as many different familiar objects 



Educative Seat Work. 53 

as tkey can. In the number recitation period which follows 
compare the different things made by various children, and 
bring out various number facts shown by their construction, 
thus : "John has made a chair. How many sticks did he use 
for the legs? How many for the seat? How many for the 
back? How many for the back and seat? Back and legs? 
How many are two sticks and one stick? etc." Perhaps 
you will find it well to have some of the less original pupils 
copy those forms their brighter fellows have made. Or per- 
haps you will find that none of your pupils show much initia- 
tive, in which case you will use the recitation period in showing 
them how to lay various forms, and having them do it, deriv- 
ing number facts as you go along. 

In the phonics and writing period today, select the name of 
some of the pupils that begins with a letter that is practically 
alike in its capital and small letter forms, such as A, C, M, N, 
S, and try to make the children recognize and utter the sound. 
Suppose the letter chosen is C, and the child's name is Carrie. 
"I am thinking of something that begins the same way as Car- 
rie's name. It is c-at. I am thinking of something else. It is 
c-abbage." Ask the children to think of something that also 
begins this way, for the children to guess. Next ask them 
to givt the sound. They may be able to do so, or this step 
may have to be postponed till tomorrow. When they are able 
to utter the sound, write the letter on the board for them. 
Have them call it by its sound, not its name. Give the chil- 
dren large cards with the letter written on them, to lay pegs 
over, to impress the form, as work for the following ten min- 
utes seat work period. The reason for beginning with letters 
that are alike in both forms is to enable them to recognize them 
in either proper or common names. 

There may be another drawing lesson today, for which 
there is a wide range of related subjects — illustration of one 
of the stories taught so far; drawing nature specimens; etc. 
The same use as on yesterday of scissors and catalogs may be 
made, and the same use of word cards in the afternoon, 
while, as before, the children may be dismissed for free play 
at 12 :05 and 1 :55. Gardening, or schoolground work, will 
probably be continued on both the second and third days. 



54 Educative Seat Work. 



Suggestions for the Fourth Day. 

Use the word cards at 9 :25 today, instead of number 
seat work. During the number period, have the children lay, 
on their desks, peas and straws, or berries and straws, in a 
pattern for stringing. This pattern should be a combination 
of either one or two of each, regularly repeated, and may be 
left to the individual child. Thus, Mary may want two peas 
and one straw, Kate two of each, Henry one of each, etc. If 
you have straws or softened corn kernels in the color already 
studied, string them instead. The teacher will find, while the 
pupils laying their designs, much opportunity for incidental 
exercise in counting. In the succeeding seat work period, 
let them string the chains as designed, to be kept and worn 
home. 

In the phonics and writing period, show the children 
how to write the letter which they yesterday covered with 
pegs or watermelon seed. Show them where it begins, what 
direction to make it in, and where it ends. Show them how 
to hold the chalk. Let them write at the board, and care- 
fully correct errors in direction of movement. Some children 
have a strong tendency to make many letters backward. 
During the following ten minutes, let them continue to write 
at the board or if no board is available, and they have slates, 
they may write on the slates with chalk, but not with slate 
pencil. Have them use dry rags first day to erase their slates, 
but before another lesson have them or some of the larger 
pupils, make for them toy erasers by tacking woolen cloth 
over small blocks of wood. These erasers may be fastened to 
the slates with string, and the slates used for further writing 
lessons, or for drawing. However, if there seems to be any 
inclination on their part to wet the slate to erase it, stop its use. 
If the pupils are not provided with slates, do not buy them, but 
use paper and broad lead pencils instead. 

The afternoon drawing lesson may be a lesson in freehand 
cutting. Since most of the teacher's time with the class 
will be required to show them how the cutting is done, the 
succeeding seat work period may profitably be spent by the 
pupils in cutting for themselves what she has just cut for 
them. 



Educative Seat Work. 55 

Dismiss at 12:05 and 1 :55; use word cards at 1 :40; and, 
at 2:10, if the work on the schoolground is sufficiently pro- 
gressed to drop it temporarily, have a lesson in paper folding, 
either making, or preparing to make, an envelope for their 
cuttings. Perhaps all they can do today is to cut a sheet of 
paper for the envelope, without doing any of the pasting. 
Let them do as much as they can. 

Suggestions for the Fifth Day. 

At 9 :25 on the fifth day, give each child his own name, 
written large on a piece of stiff paper or a card, and a handful 
of pegs, or watermelon seed. Let him cover the lines with 
these. This may easily be related to the preceding reading 
lesson by using some of the children's names in the sentences 
on the board, and then suggesting that each of them will want 
to know how his own name looks. (In later lessons, they 
will sew around the outlines of the letters in their names.) 

In the Number period today, review all numbers to date, 
having the children show, with objects, two, three, four, etc., 
and arrange some form with each number. Then, when they 
have shown the largest number they have learned, have them 
add to it another of whatever objects they have, let any 
child who knows the name of the number thus made give it, 
and if they do not know its name, give it yourself, and drill 
on it. In the following seat work period you may either have 
them lay any objects which they can make with this new num- 
ber of parts, or else use the word cards. 

In the phonics period introduce another letter as the first 
was given, using one that begins the name either of one of 
the class or of some familiar object, having other words given 
that begin the same way, having the sound alone given, show- 
ing the written form on the board, and calling particular 
attention to the direction in which it is written. Let the 
children practice it on the board, and continue this practice 
in the following ten minutes seat work period. 

Have another geography lesson today, continuing pre- 
vious work, and probably making use of objects cut out in 
previous seat work periods. In the following seat work period, 
if it seems advisable, continue the cutting. If it does not so 
seem, let the children do some illustrative drawing, perhaps 
picturing what they have been talking of in geography. 



56 Educative Seat Work. 

Dismiss at 12 :05, use the word cards again at 1 :40, and at 
1 :55 have the children do alone what paper folding they 
were shown how to do on yesterday. It may be that they 
learned to fold a sheet of paper exactly double on the diameter. 
If so, let them fold several sheets today, with the purpose of 
making a book to be used for some definite thing, which you 
will tell them of, such as mounting leaves or flowers, or to 
contain words, which either the teacher or the second or third 
grade children will write for them. These words, of course, 
will be those they are adding to their reading vocabulary from 
day to day, and the book will serve as a drill book to take 
home and show the home people what they can read, or per- 
haps get help in learning perfectly. Or it may be used as a 
guide in matching the words they are given each day on cards. 



Need for Early Study of Pupils' Interests and 
Abilities. 

It is hoped that this is sufficiently clear to be suggestive. 
Much of it is very mechanical, and it is not recommended for 
use in a school where the teacher can give her undivided atten- 
tion to the one grade. But this is impossible in a two-room 
school; the best we can do there is to be constantly on the 
watch for opportunities to vitalize the work, and bring it in 
touch with the children's natural lives. Perhaps some teachers 
will find that their children can do more than this suggests; 
if so, they should be given all they can do. Others, on the 
contrary, may be forced to undertake less. Teachers of 
experience may have their own plans for the first week, plans 
which have shown themselves to be good. It is not desired 
that this should displace any such. It is suggested that those 
teachers who have not already something as good, if not 
better, should use these helps, and daily study the pupils, their 
interests, their natures, their abilities, their lives, with the 
purpose of building upon and supplementing them, and of 
introducing seat work that is real educational occupation. 
Many suggestions for such work, of course, are found in the 
preceding chapter; the trouble is that much of it cannot be 
done before the teacher has had time to introduce it. But 
she must make these necessary introductions just as soon as 
she possibly can. 



Educative Seat Work. 57 



APPENDIX 



Consolidation of Classes, and Division of Work, in 
Two-Room School 

There is considerable difference of opinion as to how the 
grades should be divided between the two teachers of a two- 
room school. Some say, and with reason, that the grammar 
grade teacher should have three grades, and the primary 
teacher four, because the older children have so much longer 
lessons. Other assert, also with reason, that the grammar 
grade teacher should have four grades, and the primary three, 
since the older children are so much better able to work alone. 

Essential School Work. 

It may throw some light on the subject to consider what 
work each grade needs, and then see what combination will 
make it possible for them to get the greatest possible amount 
of this. It is commonly said, when speaking of the limita- 
tions of the teacher in a many-graded school, that she must 
teach »the essentials, and leave out other things. But when 
we come to inquire what the essentials are, we find that here 
too the doctors disagree. Some would say the three R's; 
others declare that in the primary grades one or two of the 
time-honored R's are altogether superfluous, and in fact hurt- 
ful. Between these two extremes we may find a safe place, 
and decide that we will not neglect the formal and symbolical 
studies, but that we will also give attention to those forms of 
work which are designed to increase the child's experiences, 
and to put him into closer, more sympathetic, and more intel- 
ligent touch with his environment. In the table which follows 
may be found a list of those subjects which seem most 
essential or important for the child in the country school, with 
a suggestive time allotment for each. It is realized that this 
time allotment is not so large as we would like to make it, but 
from the amount that we would desire to give to each has been 
pared, in its turn, enough to make it possible to give each of 
the others a fair share. All have been forced down as far as 
seems possible, if we expect any results from the school work. 



58 



Educative Seat Work. 



Time Table, in Minutes per Week, for the Seven Grades 



Grade Grade 

1 



Grade Grade 
3 



Grade 

5 



Grade 
6 



Grade 

7 



Reading 

Phonics 

Spelling 

English 

Writing 

Arithmetic 

Manual Training . 

Drawing 

Garden Work .... 

Agriculture 

Nature Study .... 

Geography 

History 

Civics 

Physiology 

Music 

Opening Exercises 
Free Play or Study 



150 
50 

100 

75 
40 
45 
20 

75 
30 



50 

50 

925 



150 
50 

100 

45 
75 
40 
45 
20 

75 
30 



50 

50 

925 



150 
50 

100 
45 
75 
40 
30 
20 

75 
45 
45 



45 

50 

675 



125 

50 
100 
30 
100 
40 
30 
20 

60 
125 
100 



45 

50 

525 



125 

50 
120 
30 
100 
40 
30 
20 

60 
125 
100 



45 

50 

525 



125 

60 
150 

100 
40 
30 
20 
75 

125 
90 
60 
50 
45 
50 

525 



90 

60 
150 

100 
40 
30 
20 

75 

125 
90 
60 
50 
45 
50 

525 



Consolidation of Classes as a Means of Making 
Essential Work Possible. 

It will, of course, be evident to any teacher who has made 
programs for the multigraded school that the suggested 
amount of work is impossible if each class is to work alone, 
without any consolidation. As a matter of fact, everything 
has been consolidated that it seemed possible to put together. 
The following summary will show what classes are com- 
bined : 

1. The English in the first and second grades will usually 
include both language and literature — stories, poems, conver- 



Educative Seat Work. 59 

sation lessons, picture stories, reproduction, forms, etc. These 
two grades may be combined in this subject. If you are fol- 
lowing a graded course of study which prescribes certain 
stories, poems, etc., for the first year, and certain others for 
the second, look over the material, divide it into two, and give 
half of it to the combined first and second grades this year, 
and the other half next year, and so on. In two years, each 
grade will get the work that has been outlined for it, though 
not always in the outlined order. 

2. The first and second grades may also be combined for 
music, drawing, geography, and manual training, following 
the same principle of alternation as explained in 1, above. 

3. The first, second, and third grades may be combined 
for nature study and garden work. 

4. The second and third grades may be combined for 
phonics, writing and once a week for arithmetic. They also 
may have one reading class, every day in the week together, as 
well as one reading class apiece daily apart. 

5. The third and fourth grades may be combined for 
language, music, and drawing. 

6. The fourth and fifth grades may be combined for spell- 
ing, manual training, nature study, history, and geography, 
and once a week for arithmetic. 

7. The fifth, sixth, seventh, and fourth grades may be 
combined for garden work. 

8. The fifth, sixth, and seventh grades may be combined 
for music, drawing, and for arithmetic once a week. 

9. The fifth and sixth grades may be combined for English 
once a week, and for reading daily. 

10. The sixth and seventh grades may be combined for 
geography, history, agriculture, physiology, spelling, manual 
training, drawing, music, civics, and for arithmetic once a 
week. 

In explanation of the combination for just once a week, 
it may be said that there are many drill exercises in arithmetic 
and English, the subjects in which such combinations have 
been suggested, which are needed equally by several successive 
grades. For example rapid work in addition, subtraction, 
multiplication, and division, may well be shared in by the 
fourth and fifth grades, while the fifth, sixth, and seventh 
will profit by quick oral problems involving business frac- 



60 Educative Seat Work. 

tions, and the sixth and seventh by review of decimals. These 
are not necessarily the combinations that will be made, but the 
observant teacher will soon come to see where the needs and 
interests of her grades interlap, and will combine them in 
such work as is related thereto. 

A few words of explanation may be necessary with regard 
to the combination of sixth and seventh grades in so many 
subjects. In geography, it is generally expected that in these 
two grades the advanced book will be mastered. The arrange- 
ment found in most books, whereby the Western Hemisphere 
first, and then the Eastern Hemisphere, is studied, may both 
be defended and attacked. There are reasons for and against 
this order of work. In view of the fact that there is consid- 
erable difference of opinion as to what order should be fol- 
lowed here, and especially as the pupils have already had a 
preliminary acquaintance with the world in the elementary 
text, it seems advisable to combine the sixth and seventh 
grades in geography, and study only one-half of the subject 
in any one year. For example, in one year the two grades 
together may study only that part of the course which is 
outlined for seventh grade; and the next year the new sixth 
grade and the seventh grade, will study that part of the course 
which is outlined for sixth grade. The only possible objection 
that can be advanced to this mode of economizing time is 
that the sixth grade cannot progress as rapidly as the seventh 
grade. This will not be true in all cases, and where it is true, 
the greater amount of time that can by this means be given 
to the subject should counter-balance the difficulty. It will 
always be possible to give extra work, outside the mere mastery 
of the text, for those pupils who are especially quick to learn. 
(Map-making, chart-making, topical reading, etc.) 

In history it will readily be seen that a knowledge of con- 
ditions in our country before the days of its independence is 
by no means necessary to a study of its history after the close 
of the Revolutionary war. The two grades may together, 
then, alternate the work of the two successive years in this as 
in geography, and the same mode of procedure may be fol- 
lowed in all those subjects where the grades are combined. 
It is a question whether it is better to make agriculture a sixth 
grade and physiology a seventh grade subject, or vice versa, 
or whether it is better still to take each year. Since both 



Educative Seat Work. 61 

are subjects that depend so largely on experience for their 
real value, and since it is desirable that no school year pass 
without some work done in the school with each, it is sug- 
gested that they be alternated, as shown on the schedule, and 
that each be pursued for two consecutive years. There is no 
reason against, and many reasons for, departing from the 
alternation of days in programming these subjects, and instead, 
in many cases, substituting an alternation of weeks. For ex- 
ample, in the fall, when there is considerable material for first- 
hand study of agricultural products and processes, the phys- 
iology might well be altogether omitted for days at a time. 
The same would be true in the spring. But in the winter, 
when agriculture, for a time, must largely cease, and when 
first-hand knowledge would be consequently difficult to get, the 
agriculture might, in its turn, be omitted, and the physiology 
be given a large part, if not the whole, of the time. 

The fifth and sixth grades may be combined in reading, 
since they will probably be nearer together in their apprecia- 
tion and mechanical ability than the sixth and seventh. The 
sixth and seventh grades, however, should combine in Eng- 
lish, since grammar is studied in both of them. One day out 
of the five, however, the seventh grade may be given an 
English period to itself, in order to afford an opportunity for 
any composition work or other language exercise that grows 
out of the seventh grade reading, or deals with any other 
advanced needs in English which may not be practically 
shared with the sixth grade. This fifth period may be pro- 
vided for in the sixth grade in combination with the fifth 
grade, when either similar composition work, based on their 
common reading, or such mechanical exercises as dictation 
for punctuation and other forms, or oral exercises for the 
formation of good habits of speech, may be engaged in. 

Where two successive grades are combined in reading, 
either the books designed for the work of both grades may 
be in the pupils' hands, and the lessons selected from either 
which furnishes the material most fitting for the needs or 
interests which are dominant at the time, or else the grades 
may, in alternate years, study the books designed for both. 
The former arrangement is better in the case of the second- 
and third-grade combination, the latter for the fifth and sixth 
grades. 



62 Educative Seat Work. 

Division of Work Between the Two Teachers as a 
Means of Economizing Time. 

gning t 
week for each, it wil 
teacher were given four grades, she could not possibly get all 
the work in the school day; whereas, the primary teacher 
would have spare time left on her hands. If the primary 
teacher be accordingly allotted four grades, the balance shifts; 
she has more work than she has time for, and the grammar 
grade teacher has time to spare. The only way whereby it 
seems possible to get all the work done, and still employ the 
whole time of two, and only two teachers, is found to consist 
in giving the primary teacher the first three grades, the gram- 
mar grade teacher the sixth and seventh grades and dividing 
the work of the fourth and fifth grades between them. The 
schedules of the two teachers are given on the next two pages. 



Educative Seat Work. 



63 



Schedule of Primary Teacher. 





Monday 


Tuesday 


Wednesday 


Thursday 


Friday 


9:00 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


9:10 


Reading 1 


Reading 1 


Reading 1 


Reading 1 


Reading 1 


9:25 


Beading 2 & 3 


Reading 2 & 3 


Reading 2 & 3 


Reading 2 & 3 


Reading 2 & 3 


9:40 


Number 1 


Number 1 


Number 1 


Number 1 


Number 1 


9:55 


Arith. 2 & 3 


Arithmetic 2 


Arithmetic 2 


Arithmetic 2 


Arithmetic 2 


10:10 


Writing 2 & 3 


Arithmetic 3 


Arithmetic 3 


Arithmetic 3 


Arithmetic 3 


10:25 


English 1 & 2 


English 1 & 2 


English 1 & 2 


English 1 & 2 


English 1 & 2 


10:45 




M 


orning Recess 
Phonics 1 






11:00 


Phonics 1 


Phonics 1 


Phonics 1 


Phonics 1 


11:10 


Phonics 2 & 3 


Phonics 2 & 3 


Phonics 2 & 3 


Phonics 2 & 3 


Phonics 2 & 3 


11:20 


Drawing 1 & 2 


Geog. 1 & 2 


Drawing 1 & 2 


Geog. 1 & 2 


Drawing 1 & 2 


11:35 


Lang. 3 & 4 


Lang. 3 & 4 


Lang. 3 & 4 


Lang. 3 & 4 


Lang. 3 & 4 


11:55 


Music 1 & 2 


Music 1 & 2 


Music 1 & 2 


Music 1 & 2 


Music 1 & 2 


12:05 


Reading 3 


Reading 3 


Reading 3 - 


Reading 3 


Reading 3 


12;?0 
1:10 




Din 


ner Intermiss 


ion 




Nature 
Study 1-3 


Nature 
Study 1-3 


Nature 

Study 1-3 


Nature 

Study 1-3 


Nature 
Study 1-3 


1:25 


Reading 1 


Reading 1 


Reading 1 


Reading 1 


Reading 1 


1:40 


Reading 2 


Reading 2 


Reading 2 


Reading 2 


Reading 2 


1:55 


History 3 


Writing 2 & 3 


History 3 


Writing 2 & 3 


History 3 


2:10 


Garden 1-3 


Manual Train- 
ing 1 & 2 


Manual Train- 
ing 3 


Manual Train- 
ing 1 & 2 


Manual Train- 
ing 3 


2:30 


Aft 


ernoon Recess 
History 4 & 5 


and Dismissa 
History 4 & 5 


1 of Grades 1 
History 4 & 5 


& 2 


2:45 


History 4 & 5 


History 4 & 5 


3:05 


Seog. 3 


Geog. 3 


Writing 4 & 5 


Geog. 3 


Writing 4 & 5 


3:20 


Music 3 & 4 


Drawing 3 & 4 


Music 3 & 4 


Drawing 3 & 4 


Music 3 & 4 


3:35 


Seog. 4 & 5 


Geog. 4 & 5 


Geog. 4 & 5 


Geog. 4 & 5 


Geog. 4 & 5 


4-00 






Dismissal 






■ 













Note — The third grade is dismissed at 3:35 daily, either 
to go home or, if this is not possible, for free play out-of- 
doors. 



64 



Educative Seat Work. 



Schedule for Grammar Grade Teacher. 





Monday 


Tuesday 


Wednksday 


Thursday 


Friday 


9:00 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 

Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


9:10 


English 6 & 7 


English 6 & 7 


English 6 & 7 


English 6 & 7 


English 7 


9:40 


Arith. 5 


Arith. 5-7 


Arith. 5 


Arith. 4 & 5 


Arith. 5 


10:00 


Arith. 4 


Arith. 4 


Arith. 4 


English 5 


Arith. 4 


10:20 


Geog. 6 & 7 


Geog. 6 & 7 


Geog. 6 & 7 


Geog. 6 & 7 


Geog. 6 & 7 


10:45 




M 








11:00 


Reading 4 


Reading 4 


Reading 4 


Reading 4 


Reading 4 


11:25 


Reading 5 & 6 


Reading 5 & 6 


Reading 5 & 6 


.Reading 5 & 6 


Reading 5 & 6 


11:50 


Reading 7 


Reading 7 


English 5 


Reading 7 


English 5 & 6 


12:20 




Din 








1:10 


Arith. 6 & 7 


Garden 4-7 


Arith. 6 


Arith. 6 


Arith. 6 


1:30 


English 5 


English 5 


Arith. 7 


Arith. 7 


Arith. 7 


1:50 


Spelling 4 & 5 


Spelling 4 & 5 


Spelling 4 & 5 


Spelling 4 & 5 


Spelling 4 & 5 


2:00 


Manual Train- 
ing 4 & 5 


Nature 

Study 4 & 5 


Manual Train- 
ing 4 & 5 


Nature 

Study 4 & 5 


Nature 

Study 4 & 5 


2:20 


Music 5-7 


Drawing 5-7 


Music 5-7 


Drawing 5-7 


Music 5-7 


2:35 




A 


fternoon Rece 


SB 




2:45 


History 6 & 7 


Civics 6 & 7 


History 6 & 7 


Civics 6 & 7 


History 6 & 7 


3:15 


Agriculture 
6 & 7 


Phvsiology 
6 & 7 


Agriculture 
6 & 7 


Physiology 


Agriculture 
6 & 7 


3:40 


Spelling 5 & 7 


Manual Train- 
ing 6 & 7 


Spelling 6 & 7 


Spelling 6 & 7 


Manual Train- 
ing 6 & 7 


4:00 






Dismissal . 



















Educative Seat Work. 65 

It will be seen that the grammar grade teacher has charge 
of the arithmetic, reading, spelling, nature study, garden work, 
and manual training of the fourth and fifth grades, and the 
primary teacher has charge of their history, geography and 
writing, while their English is divided, the grammar grade 
teacher taking the fifth grade English, and the primary teacher 
taking the fourth. It is evident that the fourth and fifth grade 
children have so much of their work in the grammar grade 
room they should have their seats there also, and only go 
into the primary room to recite in those classes which the 
primary teacher has charge of. The schedule has been 
arranged so that a minimum amount of passing to and fro 
will be required for such change of class. The fourth and 
fifth grades take their places in the grammar grade room at 
nine in the morning, and the first move that is necessary is 
the passage of the fourth grade to the primary room for Eng- 
lish at 11 :35. No change of classes is required during the first 
half of the afternoon session, and after the afternoon recess, 
since most of their work now is in the primary room and the 
first and second grade children have been dismissed, the fourth 
and fifth grades, instead of returning to the grammar grade 
room, pass into the primary room, and remain there until the 
close of the school day. 

There is just one problem that is likely to arise here, and 
that has to do with the writing lesson for these two grades. 
It is quite possible that the seats in the primary room will 
be so small that it will not be possible to make the fourth and 
fifth grade pupils comfortable here for a writing lesson. In 
such case, there will have to be a slight transfer of work. The 
grammar grade teacher will have to teach their writing, and 
turn their manual training over to the primary teacher. Under 
this arrangement, the times for the subjects would be ex- 
changed ; the grammar grade teacher would put on her sched- 
ule Writing instead of Manual Training, from 2 :00 until 2 :20 
Monday and Wednesday, and the primary teacher would 
change the Writing 4 and 5 which now appears on her schedule 
from 3 :05 to 3 :20 Wednesday and Friday to Manual Train- 
ing. Unfortunately, there is only fifteen minutes allowed for 
this writing, and fifteen minutes will be too small an allow- 
ance for the manual training. There will be nothing to do 
but to take the extra five minutes from either the preceding 



66 Educative Seat Work. 

or the following class, either of which could spare it better. 
Probably the best arrangement would be to take it from the 
preceding one day and the following the next, so that neither 
would unduly suffer. 

It is important that the same teacher should have the 
garden work,* the nature study, and the arithmetic, since they 
may be made mutually helpful. It would be better that she 
should have the manual training also, since much of its work 
should be called forth by the garden needs. But in case the 
ill-fitting desks render this impossible, because of the neces- 
sary exchange with writing, the teacher who does take charge 
of the manual training should make a practice of consulting 
with her co-worker, in order that the benefit accruing from a 
relationship between the two subjects may not be lost. Since 
the manual training should also be related with the history 
and geography work, it would not be altogether bad if the 
change had to be made. 

Suggestive Schedules of Recitation for Each Grade. 

These schedules of the teacher's work with each of the 
seven grades are given on the following pages. It is urgently 
suggested that each teacher should decide what work she 
wishes to occupy the children in those periods which are left 
blank on the schedules, and which are to be devoted either to 
preparation for recitation, or to the carrying out of some line 
of work which has been sketched in the period which she has 
with the class. In the careful planning of study periods is the 
secret of profitably using the children's school days. 



Educative Seat Work. 



67 



First Grade Program 





Monday 


Tuesday 


"Wednesday 


Thursday 


Friday 


9 "00 


Opening Exerc 












































9:25 












9 "40 


Number 






















9:55 












10:25 


Language and 


Literature w 


ith Grade 2 










10 '45 


Morning Reces 


' 
















.... 




Phonics and 




















11:10 












11:20 


Drawing (2) 


Geog. (2) 


Drawing (2) 


Geog. (2) 


Drawing (2) 


11 '35 


Music with Gr 


ade 2 


















12:05 














Dinner Interm 


ission .... 


















1 "10 


Nature Study, 


with Grades 2 


& 3 














1 "25 


T 
Keacling 






















1:40 












2:10 


Garden (2&3) 


Manual Train- 
ing (2) 




Manual Train- 
ing (2) 




2:30 


Dismissal for t 


he afternoon. 









Note — If desired, there is no reason why the first grade 
should not be dismissed at 1 :40 on Wednesday and Friday, 
since they will have no further classes all afternoon. How- 
ever, if it seems best to keep them in school as long on these 
days as on other days of the week, the 2:10 period may be 
given to a continuation of the manual training work that they 
have been shown how to do on the preceding Tuesday and 
Thursday. This will be found to apply to the second grade 
also. For explanation of figures in parentheses see note on 
page 73. 



68 



Educative Seat Work. 



Second Grade Program 





Monday 


lUESDAY 


WEDNESDyvY 


Thursday 


Friday 


9:00 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


9:10 














Beading, with 


Grade 3 .... 


















9:40 












9:55 


Arith. (3) 


Arithmetic 


Arithmetic 


Arithmetic 


Arithmetic 


10:10 


Writing (,3) 










10-25 


Language and 


Literature, wi 


th Grade 1 














Morning Reces 


s 


















11:00 














Phonics, with 




















11:20 


Drawing (1) 


Geography (1) 


Drawing (1) 


Geography (1) 


Drawing (1) 


11-35 


Music with G 


rade 1 . . . . 


















11:55 












12:05 














Dinner Recess 






















Nature Study, 


with Grades 1 


& 3 














1:25 












1-40 


ng 
























1:55 




Writing (3) 




Writing (3) 




2:10 


Garden (1-3) 


Manual Train- 
ing (1) 




Manual Train- 
ing (1) 




2:30 


Dismissal for t 


he afternoon 









Educative Seat Work. 



69 



Third Grade Program 





Monday 


Tuesday 


Wednesday 


Thursday 


Friday 


9:00 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


9:10 












9 "''5 


TJ<.n/tir,o. witVl 


r • ' 2 

aae z 
















9:40, 








9:55Arith. (2) 










10:10jWriting (2) 


Arithmetic 


Arithmetic 


Arithmetic 


Arithmetic 


10:25| 
































11:00 














Phonics, with 




















11:20 












11 "35 


Language, wit 


h Grade 4 


















11.55 




































12 ■'^0 


r>;«no,. TntoT-m 


ission 


















1:10, Nature Study, 


with Grades 


1 & 2 












1:25 












1:55 


History 


Writing (2) 


History 


Writing (2) 


History 


2:10 


Garden (1&2) 




Manual Train- 
ing 




Manual Train- 
ing 


2 "30 


Afternoon Rec 


^^^ 


















2:45 












3:05 


Geography 


Geography 




Geography 




3:20 


Music (4) 


Drawing (4) 


Music (4) 


Drawing (4) 


Music (4) 


3:35 


Dismissal for 


the afternoon 









70 



Educative Seat Work. 



Fourth Grade Program 





Monday 


Tuesday 


Wednesday 


Thursday 


Friday 


9:00 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


9:10 












9:40 








Arith. (5) 




10:00 


Arithmetic 


Arithmetic 


Arithmetic 




Arithmetic 


10:20 














Morning Rece 












.... 
































11:25 












11-35 


Language, wit 


h Grade 3 
















11:55 












12:20 


Dinner Interm 


ission 


















1:10 




Garden (5-7) 








1:30 












1-50 


Spelling, with 


Grade 5 


















2:00 


Manual Train- 
ing (5) 


Nature 

Study (5) 


Manual Train- 
in- (5) 


Nature 
Study (5) 


Nature 

Study (5) 


2:20 












2-35 


Afternoon Rec 





















2:45 


History, with 


Grade 5 
















3:05 






Writing (5) 




Writing (5) 


3:20 


Music (3) 


Drawing (3) 


Music (3) 


Drawing (3) 


Music (3) 


3:35 


Geography, wi 


th Grade 5 
















4:00 

























Educative Seat Work. 



71 



Fifth Grade Program 





Monday 


Tuesday 


Wednesday 


Thursday 


Friday 


9:00 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


9:10 












9:40 


Arithmetic 


Arith. (6&7) 


Arithmetic 


Arithmetic 


Arithmetic 


10:00 








English 




10:20 












10:45 


Morning Rece 





















11:00 












11:25 
























11:50 






English 




English (6) 


12:20 


Dinner Interm 


ission 
















1:10 




Garden 4-7 








^1:30 


English 


English 








1:50 


Spelling, with 


Grade 4 


















2:00 


Manual Train- 
ing (4) 


Nature 

Study (4) 


Manual Train- 
ing (4) 


Nature 

Study (4) 


Nature 

Study (4) 


2:20 


Music (6&7) 


Drawing (6&7) 


Music (6&7) 


Drawing (6&7) 


Music (6&7) 


2:35 


Afternoon Rer 


ess 


















2:45'History, with 




















3:05 






Writing (4) 




Writing (4) 


3:20 












3:35 


Geography, wi 


th Grade 4 . . . 


















4:00 

























72 



Educative Seat Work. 



Sixth Grade Program 





Mom DAY 


Tuesday 


Wednesd.ay 


Thursday 


Friday 


9:00 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


9:10 


English (7) 


English (7) 


English (7) 


English (7) 




9:40 




Arith. (5&7) 








10:00 












10:20 


Geography, wi 




















10:45 


Morning Rece 


ss 




1 










11:00 












11 :25 


Reading, with 


Grade 5 . . 




















11:50 






1 


English (5) 


12:20 






1 j 










1:10 


Arith. (7) 


Garden (4-7) 


Arithmetic 


Arithmetic 


Arithmetic 


1:30 










1:50 










2:20 


Music (5-7) 


Drawing (5-7) 


Music (5-7) 


Drawing (5-7) 


Music (5-7) 




Afternoon Rec 


ess 


















2:45 


History (7) 


Civics (7) 


History (7) 


Civics (7) 


History (7) 


3:15 


Agri. (7) 


Phys. (7) 


Agri. (7) 


Phys. (7) 


Agri. (7) 


3:40 


Spelling (7) 


Manual Train- 
ing (7) 


Spelling (7) 


Spelling (7) 


Manual Train- 
ing (7) 




Dismissal 




















Educative Seat Work. 



73 



Seventh Grade Program 





MONDAY 


Tuesday 


Wednesday 


Thursday 


Friday 


9:00 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


Opening 
Exercises 


9:10 


English (6) 


English (6) 


English (6) 


English (6) 


English 


9:40 




Arith. (5&6) 








10:00| 










10:20 Geography, wi 


th Grade 6 
















10:45iMnrnino- Rpcp 


ss 











= 










11:00 












11:20 












11:50 


Reading 


Reading 




Reading 






Dinner Recess 




















1:10 


Arith (6) 


Garden (4-6) 








1:30 






Arithmetic 


Arithmetic 


Arithmetic 


1:50 












2:20 


Music (5&6) 


Drawing(5&6) 


Music (5&6) 


Drawing(5&6) 


Music (5&6) 


^.^..XliLC liWUl^ 




















*2:45 


History (6) 


Civics (6) 


History (6) 


Civics (6) 


History (6) 


3:15 


Agri. (7) 


Phys. (7) 


Agri. (7) 


Phys. (7) 


Agri. (7) 


3:40 


Spelling (6) 


Manual Train- 
ing (6) 


Spelling (6) 


Spelling (6) 


Manual Train- 
ing (6) 




Dismissal 





















Note — On this, and the preceding programs, numerals 
in parenthesis are used after the name of the class, to indicate 
the grade with which it combines on that special day. For 
example, on this page, Spelling (6) indicates that on the day 
where that is found, the sixth and seventh grades combine 
in spelling. Wherever a class comes at the same period all 
through the week, its name has been given in the space for 
Monday, and a line of dots run through the remaining days 
of the week. 



74 Educative Seat Work. 



Explanation of the Construction of the Programs. 

With reference to the order of subjects on the schedule, 
it may be well to state that they have been arranged in accord- 
ance with the principle that the first hours of a school session 
are more favorable for that type of work which requires drill 
or close concentration. A full elaboration of this principle 
will be found in Bagley's Class Room Management. The sub- 
jects that are recognized to require such attention are mathe- 
matics, reading in the lower grades, while its mechanics are 
being mastered, phonics, spelling, writing, and the formation 
of correct habits in oral or written English. It should be 
observed, however, that the close attention in spelling is 
necessary in the study period rather than in the recitation 
period, therefore the latter has been placed at a later period of 
the day, but it will be advisable in arranging the study schedule 
for the day to give spelling study a very favorable place. 

It will be seen that the other drill subjects have, as far 
as possible, been given periods in the first or third quarters 
of the day, the dinner intermission serving in some slight 
degree to overcome the fatigue of several hours application 
to study. Phonics has been placed immediately after the morn- 
ing recess for the same reason. The only subject that has 
especially suffered is writing, the most difficult of all to place 
satisfactorily. This is because writing not only needs a period 
when the pupil is not likely to be fatigued, but also requires 
a time not immediately after any violent exercise, such as 
running or playing at recess. There must be time for the tne 
tense, excited nervous system to relax. It may be well to keep 
these two facts in mind should any change in the writing 
period seem necessary to fit the special conditions of the school. 

The larger share of the teacher's time in the first part of 
the day is given to the smaller children, who cannot be 
expected to concentrate their efforts for any length of time on 
study. The older children should have such power, so they 
have been left the early hours, when they are in a better phys- 
ical condition for close application, for study periods, and their 
recitations have been massed in the latter third of the day, 
when the smaller pupils may be dismissed. , 

It is hoped that with these facts in hand in explanation 
of the construction of the sample programs, it will not be diffi- 
cult to adapt them to the special needs or conditions of any 
school that finds it impossible to use them just as they stand. 



Educative Seat Work. 75 

COST OF MATERIALS AND REFERENCES 
AND ADDRESSES 



Materials and Prices. 

Manila Drawing Paper, sheets 6x9 inches, per ream. .$ .20 

Gray Drawing Paper, sheets 6x9 inches, per ream 20 

White Drawing Paper, sheets 6x9 inches, per ream 35 

Tinted Drawing and Construction Paper, sheets 6x9 

inches, 100 sheets of one color 15 

Tinted Drawing and Construction Paper, large sheets, 

24 X 36 inches, each • • • -02 

Engine colored paper (colored on both sides) for folding 

and cutting, sheets 5 inches square, 100 sheets 15 

Black engine colored paper, 5 inches square, 100 sheets. . .15 
Larger sheets of each kind of paper priced in proportion 
Squared paper, 24 x 36 inches, ruled in 1-inch squares, 

per hundred sheets 2.00 

Squared paper, 9 x 12 inches, ruled in ^-inch squares, 

per thousand sheets 2.00 

Squared paper, 9 x 12 inches, ruled in ^-inch squares, 

per thousand sheets 2.00 

Squared paper, 9 x 12 inches, ruled in 14 -inch squares, 

per thousand sheets 2.00 

Clay flour, 5 lbs. for 25 

School scissors, per dozen $1.00 to 1.50 

"Bartlett Looms," for weaving all kinds of doll clothes. 

Teachers' Outfit 25 cents to 1.00 

Paste, per quart , 60 

(This may be diluted with water and kept in closed jars) 

Raffia, natural color, per pound 20 

Raffia, natural color, in 5-lb. lots, per lb 15 

Weaving needles, for paper or varn, each 05 

Reed, per lb 40 to .85 

Burlap, 36 inches wide, per yard 25 

Water colors in boxes, per box 15 to ./5 

Separate pans of color in selected assortment, per doz. . .35 
Separate cakes of color in selected assortment, per doz. . .35 

Easy Dye, per tube l-' 

( Prepared by mixing with cold water. ) 
Carpet Warp, per spool • -1^ 



76 Educative Seat Work. 

Addresses of Firms Furnishing Materials. 

Milton Bradley & Co., 1209 Arch St., Philadelphia. 
Atkinson, Menzer, and Grover, Ne 
Prano- Educational Co., New York 



Atkinson, Menzer, and Grover, New York and Chicago. 



Books on Handwork. 
(Those starred have been found particularly helpful.) 

Occupation for Little Fingers,* Sage and Cooley, pub- 
lished by Chas. Scribner's Sons. This contains directions 
with illustrations for cordwork, rafha, coarse sewing, 
paper cutting and folding, clay modeling, weaving, bead 
work, furniture for doll house, crocheting and knitting, 
work for boys, use of nature's materials. Much of the 
work it outlines may be done with little or no cost for 
materials. 

Story Telling with Scissors, M. Helen Beckwith, published 
by Milton Bradley & Co. Contains designs for paper 
cutting and pasting. 

Seat Work and Industrial Occupations,* Gillman and 
Williams, published by Macmillan Company. Paper fold- 
ing, measuring and cutting, poster work, direction for 
clay work and sand table, and for a doll house, with 
correlated lessons in geographical and historical home 
study, and seat reading lessons. 

Construction Work in Rural and Elementary Schools,* 
McGaw, published by A. Flanagan Company, Chicago. 
Knots and chains of cord, weaving, paper construction, 
wood construction, basketry, raffia, chair caning, and a 
chapter on "A School Garden." 

Industrial Work for Public Schools, Holton and Rollins, 
published by Rand, McNally & Co., New York. Work 
for the first five school years, that of the first two related 
to the months and planned to fit them. Paper folding 

and weaving, rugs of raffia and yarn, hammock weaving, 
basketry, and bead work. Particularly well illustrated, 
and containing a large number of verses or whole poems 

to be used in connection with the hand work. 



Educative Seat Work. 77 

What and How, Palen and Henderson, published by Milton 
and Bradley, stick laying, clay modeling, sewing, form 
and color, freehand cutting, weaving, folding and con- 
struction work, illustrated in colors and black and white. 

Basket Making, Morse, published iu A. Flanagan. Price, 
25 cents. 

Goodwin's Course in Sewing, Book I, published by Frank 
D. Beatty^ Company, 225 Fifth Avenue, New York 
City. 

The Industrial Primary Reader, D. C. Heath & Co., New 
York City. 



0(5 n 



1911 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 




019 821 753 



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